Social media giants have grand plans for AI. Creators fear they'll be left out.

• Influencers are reckoning with a new boogeyman: artificial intelligence.
• Social apps seem infatuated with AI, and it's making some creators feel like an afterthought.
• Big Tech has an opportunity to help creators share in AI's profits — if they choose to do so.

The days of special treatment for influencers may be numbered as big social apps turn their attention to a shiny new object: artificial intelligence.

The tension recently surfaced on Instagram. The platform angered some creators by testing a feature that used AI to tag and sell products using their posts without giving them a heads-up (or a commission). The tool, called "Shop the look," was a stark reminder from Meta: you make the content, but we own the digital real estate.

"It felt like stealing," said Julia Berolzheimer, a fashion and lifestyle influencer with over one million Instagram followers. "To have my name and my face and my likeness be pushing something without my consent or even my knowledge."

A Meta spokesperson told Business Insider the feature was a "limited test intended to help people explore products that match their interests." They added that Meta itself does not earn a commission, and that it's exploring "various changes" as it continues to test the feature and gather feedback.

Instagram's shopping test — and similar features on TikTok and Pinterest — have added to broader creator concerns about how AI could affect their careers. Recent AI experiments, such as Meta's influencer AI chatbots and TikTok's AI avatar tool for marketers, have hinted at a world in which creators lose some work to AI.

The AI revolution doesn't need to be a death knell for the creator economy. If Instagram were to offer influencers a commission on its "Shop the look" sales, it could become a passive income source for creators, for example. There's ample opportunity for Big Tech to help creators share in the profits of AI — if they decide to.

Jack Conte, the CEO of the creator-monetization platform Patreon, recently told Business Insider he's not anti-AI.

"I think the tech is really cool, and I think it's going to help humans make really beautiful things," he said. "But that doesn't give people carte blanche to roll it out in a way that just creates a bloodbath for the world's creative people."

Creators are losing some leverage

Influencers are accustomed to special treatment, whether that's gaining VIP entry to events or receiving brand freebies in the mail.

That elevated status was particularly evident in the early 2020s when there was a mad dash among social apps to woo influencers with billion-dollar creator funds and other splashy rewards. Competition for talent was fierce after TikTok showed up in the US and threatened to carve out market share.

While social media platforms previously went all in on the creator economy and supporting emerging creators, "now it doesn't feel like that," said Bethany Everett-Ratcliffe, a fashion creator with about 53,000 followers who was in Instagram's now-shuttered test of an affiliate program.

"A lot of these platforms are starting to think about their creators like Uber thinks about their drivers," Conte said. "They want to help them for now, until they don't need them anymore."

Big Tech is so focused on AI that creators can feel like they aren't a priority.

Meta mentioned AI or artificial intelligence over 100 times in its 2025 annual report, while creators came up six times. In January, the company said it would reinvest a lot of its revenue into "very attractive investment opportunities in AI infrastructure and talent." The company recently bought Moltbook, a social network for AI agents.

As the gaze of the social media giants turns elsewhere, creators have less leverage.

There's also an endless on-ramp of new creators if social apps annoy their current rosters. There are now about 1.5 million full-time content creators, a 750% increase from 2020, according to a 2025 Interactive Advertising Bureau estimate. AI is making content creation easier, spurring a wave of new influencers vying for attention.

"I think your average creator is going to lose a lot of value due to what AI can recreate," said Lindsey Gamble, a VP at the influencer-marketing platform Izea.

"There's this limitless amount of content where you don't necessarily need humans to push out the content," he said.

Big Tech could write creators into its AI playbook

Can the Big Tech companies steamroll ahead without creators? Maybe.

Meta and OpenAI created AI-only social feeds in the past year (that have received mixed reactions). With AI-generated content, users will have ample things to scroll past and, therefore, space to view ads.

However, will that content be good enough to entice people to stay? And will brands view AI feeds as less premium?

"In an advertising environment, you actually need trust because you need that ad, whether it's sitting on an image or adjacent to an image, to be something that a consumer feels like is real," said Amber Venz Box, president of the influencer-affiliate platform LTK.

Influencers bring that human touch — and trust — to these apps.

YouTube is already making hard choices that weigh the benefits of AI against its risk to content quality. The company recently cracked down on a slew of popular AI channels that it had deemed "spam," for example. Meanwhile, social startups have sprung up over the past year that explicitly reject AI, such as a revamped version of Vine called diVine.

Social media companies that go too far with AI could set themselves up for an apology tour to win back the trust of creators and their fans. The tricky task ahead for social platforms is embracing a new technology without uprooting the livelihoods of the creators who help sustain their massive businesses.

A recent Patreon survey found that 67% of creators felt "somewhat or very negative about the impact of AI on their world overall."

"While AI can make content creation faster and more efficient, the value of a creator has always been the authentic connection they've built with their audience," said Hannah Hamn, a talent manager at Parker Management.