Enter “Vibes,” a dedicated feed of entirely AI-generated video clips submitted by creators, now available on the Meta AI app and website. 

The feed is presumably called Vibes because each clip has its own “vibe;” a feeling paired with just a hint of setting but no plot. These videos are great eye candy, but lack storytelling. After scrolling for hours, the endless stream of shorts would have washed over you, rarely clinging to your mind. 

To be fair, Vibes demonstrates how far AI video has come in just a few years. But the problem here is not the Uncanny Valley, that unsettling sensation of something being almost but not quite human. Brains are storytelling machines, which is why Facebook’s infinite scroll was once so compelling. We shared stories and built community stories by arguing about them. 

As for the mechanics, Meta’s algorithm will gradually personalize your feed. Users have the option to generate a video from scratch or remix one they see on their feed. Before publishing, they can add new visuals, layer in music, and adjust styles to match their taste. 

The Vibes debacle illuminates something important about how major tech companies are approaching AI: they’re creating technology because they can. But what’s the endgame of a feed where nothing is real, where every video is a hallucination, where the entire point is proving that machines can generate plausible-looking content in infinite quantities?

The answer Meta seems to be offering is: engagement. Scrolling. Screen time. 

The same metrics that have driven social media from the beginning, now stripped even from the thin justification that we were at least sharing real experiences, connecting with real people, documenting real moments.

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