Remember Vine, the OG video sharing app that basically paved the way for Instagram and the rest? Well, it’s back, or at least something close to it. The new version is called Divine, and it comes with a rule that feels quaint: the videos have to be made by people, not machines.

Vine user meagancignoli once got 178 million views. Now she has 17 followers on Divine.

Back in 2013, Vine helped define short video on the internet. The videos were about six seconds long and looped endlessly. Even given these constrains, however, Vine It moved fast and didn’t ask permission. At its peak it reached about 100 million users and turned unknown creators into minor celebrities, including Logan Paul. Then it stalled. Jack Dorsey sold it into Twitter and by 2017 it was gone.

Now Dorsey is backing a return. Divine keeps the six second limit. It is actually adding about 500,000 old clips and letting users post new ones, but with a condition none of it be AI generated. If you want to post, you either shoot inside the app or prove you made it yourself.

That rule is not random. Feeds are filling up with low grade AI video. One recent study suggests more than a fifth of what new users see on YouTube falls into that category. The result is a strange sameness, content that looks polished but feels empty.

Divine started as a side project by Evan Henshaw-Plath aka Rabble as a place to store old Vines. The response pushed it further. Now it is live to the public, funded in part through Dorsey’s nonprofit work in open social media.

There is also a second idea under this, however. Dorsey has said before that Vine never found a business model. This time, the pitch is that creators keep ownership of their work and their audience, and build their own revenue streams from there. It sounds good, but it runs into the same hard truth that killed Vine the first time. Attention is easy to get, money is not and selling advertising against six second fart videos is tough.

Further, Vine is old news. TikTok has scale that Vine never reached. Meta pushes Reels across its apps. Shorts on YouTube pull in hundreds of billions of views each day. These systems reward volume, not restraint. Have 500,000 old Vines is a nice start but a service like Divine needs millions of views per day to compete at all with the incumbents.

Obviously Divine is trying something different. It is betting that people are tired of synthetic content, and that a small, strict format can still matter. Maybe it works as a refuge. Maybe it stays a niche.

There is a sense of regret hanging over this return. Vine was sold too early. It lost its shape inside a larger company. Now the same people are trying again, but the internet has changed. The question is whether anyone still wants six seconds of something real, when everything else is louder, longer, and easier to fake.

I’ll be holding an in-person mixer at Red Lion in Manhattan on Wednesday, May 6 at 7pm. This will be a getting-to-know-you meetup without a formal agenda, just a few drinks and lots of chats. If you’re interested in AI video, AI video ethics, or AI video production, I think this will be a great way to get up to speed and start some interesting conversations.

RSVP

You can RSVP here on Meetup and please consider joining our group so we can grow and network.

A.I. Shakes Up China’s Entertainment Landscape

This video from the NYT shows us the extent to which AI-powered microdramas are taking over the Chinese internet. A shift is moving through China’s entertainment world, and it is most clear in the rise of the microdrama, those fast, phone-made serials that trade depth for speed and keep viewers coming back in short bursts. The form has grown into a $14 billion behemoth, built on tight schedules and constant output. Now, AI is taking over a lot of the work. But there’s a dark side.

Tools like Seedance now let directors like Wang Yushun produce scenes that once needed full crews, cutting time, lowering costs, and pushing visual ambition into places small studios could not reach before. He built a company, hired a hundred people, and then let half of them go when the math no longer worked.

Actors feel it too.

Xing Enran, who once worked most days of the month, now waits for roles as platforms demand higher polish and algorithms reward synthetic precision. Even though it’s easier than ever to make content, art is difficult to produce.

AI Video Goes Viral On X Amid Lawsuit Over Allegations Against JPMorgan Exec

An AI-generated “parody” video tied to a lawsuit involving Lorna Hajdini spread widely on Twitter, turning a legal dispute into a viral spectacle. The clip, which is a faked version of 50 Shades of Gray, does not show real events but it basically reiterates the allegedly false accusations made by a junior male colleague. Hajdini denied all the accusations, but this and other AI videos have already shaped how the public sees her case, raising concerns about how easily unproven claims can take on a sense of reality.

TBC @TBC_on_X The 50 Shades of JP Morgan teaser looks so wild... 9:41 PM · Apr 30, 2026 · 4.62M Views 483 Replies · 1.77K Reposts · 23.9K Likes

Netanyahu Shares AI Video Casting Rivals Bennet, Lapid as Arab Lawmakers as Election Campaigning Ramps Up

An AI-generated video shared by Benjamin Netanyahu has pulled AI into the center of Israel’s election fight. The clip shows Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid removing their faces to reveal Arab lawmakers Mansour Abbas and Ahmad Tibi, pushing a familiar claim that rival blocs depend on Arab parties. Bennett has criticized the use of AI clips as political attacks, while others across the spectrum have begun using similar tools. The result is a campaign shaped not just by policy, but by manufactured images that blur lines between argument, satire, and misinformation.

Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו @netanyahu מורידים את המסכות 4:15 PM · Apr 29, 2026 · 1.29M Views 1.91K Replies · 1.02K Reposts · 7.41K Likes