Tired of AI slop on Instagram? These alternative apps are for human artists only

Baby Elon Musk. Shrimp Jesus. The Titanic colliding with an iceberg lettuce. Social media is saturated with AI slop — low-quality, often ridiculous and sometimes disturbing images, videos, or words created using generative artificial intelligence. 

While some AI slop is glaringly fake, a lot isn’t. I remember the first time AI hoodwinked me. It was a striking video I saw on Instagram of a pair of snowy owls in the Arctic with a brood of six little chicks. Amazed by the scene, I instantly shared it with my wife. Her response was: “Surely that can’t be real?!” 

It wasn’t. A quick review of the poster, Yournaturescenary — which has over 230,000 followers on the platform — revealed the video was indeed AI-generated. I felt fooled, conned, and ultimately, suspicious of every other image I saw online from that moment on. 

 I used to use Instagram to follow creators and share my own photographs of nature and wildlife — you know, images that I captured using an actual camera, with my actual human hands. But recently, scrolling through my feed has become less viewing pleasure and more spot-the-bot. That’s irritating, sure, but when AI images appear real they can also cause serious harm. 

All of this has forced me to seek an alternative. It turns out, I’m not alone. 

“The most frequent feedback we hear is that people are feeling overwhelmed by AI-generated images flooding mainstream platforms,” Jingna Zhang, founder of Cara, a decentralised social media app for artists, tells TNW. 

But unfortunately, it’s a problem that’s likely to get a lot worse before it gets better. 

Meta opens the AI floodgates
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has embraced AI on its platforms, scrapped fact-checking, and even plans to allow bots to open their own accounts. And while Meta did start labelling AI-generated content last year, its algorithms have been shown to mistakenly label real images as bot-created ones and vice versa. The platform has also made it really easy to disable the label.   

But the cherry on the shitcake is that Meta openly uses public posts to train its algorithms. Although most European users can opt out, since they’re protected by data protection laws, Meta automatically opts in all user accounts by default. Fuelled by all that free data, AI algorithms are rapidly improving — hurting artists and creators. It’s like learning valuable skills from a friend, using those skills to start a company together, and then cutting them out of the benefits — ring any bells, Zuck? 

AI slop, bot accounts, little to no moderation — it’s part of what writer Cory Doctorow coined the “enshittification” of the internet. But while many have just accepted the new reality, some creators are seeking refuge in safer corners of the internet.   

Cara has been one of the beneficiaries.  When Meta announced plans to train AI models on user content last year, the app’s user base grew from 40,000 to 650,000 users in a single week.

“They [artists] have been looking for a place where they can still experience genuine human-to-human connection in art and online communities, and that’s how they found Cara,” Zhang says. 

Putting artists first
Zhang argues that new rules to protect creators online are essential.

“We believe that the rampant ethical and data privacy issues around these [AI] datasets urgently need to be resolved via regulations, and governments should explicitly clarify their positions or pass bills to protect artists and all individuals from such unauthorised use,” says Zhang. 

It’s a problem Zhang, who’s an award-winning Singaporean photographer, knows all too well. She won a landmark appeal in a Luxembourg court last year over a painter who copied one of her photographs. She’s also suing Google for allegedly using her photographs to train its AI model Imogen without consent, and is a plaintiff in a similar case against Midjourney, Stability AI, Runway AI, and DeviantArt. 

Zhang launched Cara in 2023 as a sanctuary for artists looking to share and connect. The volunteer-run organisation has both a website and mobile app. Like Instagram, users can host a portfolio of work on their profile, post images, engage with others through likes and comments, and build a following. They also have a feed where they can post updates, similar to on X or BlueSky. The platform currently has 1 million users. 

Cara’s big selling point, however, is its policies on AI. All users are automatically opted out from AI bot-scraping by default, the company tells me. Cara also doesn’t host generative AI content on the platform, and uses a combination of automated detection and human moderation to keep the site clean. 

For Zhang, curbing bots on the platform isn’t just about user piracy, but also about protecting art itself. “What makes art meaningful is knowing that a real person gave time from their life to hone a craft, practice, build skills, and wanted to express themselves so much that they created something through art,” she says. 

So how does it compare with Instagram? Well, my first impressions are good. The app works smoothly, has a similar layout to other social media I’ve used, and features content that’s generally of high quality. Most of all, I can relax and take off my bot-spotting glasses, knowing that all the artworks were created by humans. 

However, Cara is clearly a place for artists — sketchers, painters, graphic designers, and the like — not photographers. For that, we tried another app — Pixelfed. 

Not perfect, but not Instagram
Launched and run by Canadian developer Daniel Supernault, Pixelfed is an open-source, decentralised photo-sharing platform similar to Instagram but without ads or algorithms. As with Cara, AI-generated content is prohibited. 

Pixelfed’s server rules upon sign up
Much like Instagram, Pixelfed enables users to share and discover photos and videos, as well as send direct messages. However, the feed is chronological — posts are displayed in the exact order they were published. That’s like Instagram before 2016, when it switched to an algorithm-based feed that shows you the content it thinks you want to see.

Despite having only 700,000 users on the platform, Pixelfed already hosts plenty of great photography. It feels raw and unfiltered, and the ad-free, AI-free experience allows you to focus on the content.

The Pixelfed feed
Pixelfed runs on ActivityPub, an open protocol for social networking developed by Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web Consortium.

ActivityPub also powers other apps like microblogging site Mastodon — founded by German developer Eugen Rochko — and YouTube alternative PeerTube. Together they form part of the fediverse, a decentralised network that allows users to follow, share, and interact across different apps — similar to email working between Gmail and Outlook.  

Pixelfed’s user base grew rapidly following the release of its app on iOS and Android in January. For a short while after launch, it became the most downloaded social app on Google Play in the US and France. 

However, with Supernault the sole developer, plus the surge in traffic, there are inevitably some bugs. For one, my phone’s back button didn’t work when using the app on Android, which meant I had to reach to the top-left to use the in-app button. The app also feels a bit slow. 

Supernault just raised over $90,000 through Kickstarter, so that might help him iron out some of the bugs or maybe even hire another dev or two. 

But as one Reddit user put it: “People are moving to Pixelfed not because it’s perfect but because it’s not Instagram (I don’t think anyone needs to explain why at this point). If staying on Instagram doesn’t affect your values[,] don’t make the move.” 

So long, Instagram, I’m off. Dear friends, will you join me?