January 2026
The Polished Feed
Is Dead
AI made perfection worthless. Now imperfection is the only proof you are real.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, posted a 20-slide memo on New Year's Eve. The message was clear: the era of the polished feed is over. Not because people got tired of it. Because AI made it meaningless.
"The feeds are starting to fill up with synthetic everything," Mosseri wrote. "Everything that made creators matter is now suddenly accessible to anyone with the right tools."
When anyone can generate a perfect image in seconds, perfection stops being impressive. It becomes suspicious.
The Inversion
For a decade, we optimized for polish. Ring lights. Presets. Face tune. The goal was to look professional, to compete with the curated perfection of brands and celebrities.
Now polish is the tell. The more perfect something looks, the more likely it was generated. The aesthetic we spent years perfecting became the signature of synthetic content.
The New Authenticity
Mosseri outlined what will prove you are real in 2026: backlighting, shaky hands, small flaws, human traces. The imperfect details that make an image feel less manufactured.
The things AI would never think to include are now the things that prove you are human.
"It will be more practical to fingerprint real media than fake media," Mosseri wrote. Camera manufacturers could cryptographically sign images at capture, creating a chain of custody for authenticity.
Camera Companies Got It Wrong
Mosseri went further, calling out the entire camera industry. "They're betting on the wrong aesthetic. They're competing to make everyone look like a professional photographer from the past."
Perfect skin. Perfect lighting. Perfect composition. Every feature designed to eliminate the traces of human capture.
Grain. Motion blur. Imperfect framing. The evidence that a real person was there, in that moment, with shaky hands.
Looking like you had a professional photographer. Looking like you had perfect lighting. Looking like the magazine cover.
Looking undeniably real. Looking like no algorithm generated you. Looking human in a sea of synthetic.
The decade we spent learning to look polished was training for a race that no longer exists.
Perfect is now suspicious.
Human is the new premium.
What This Means
For brands, this is an existential shift. The playbook that worked for a decade is now counterproductive. The polish that signaled quality now signals inauthenticity.
The brands that win will be the ones brave enough to look human again. To show the mess. To embrace the imperfect. To prove they are real in a world filling with synthetic.
The new rules:
- 1Imperfection is proof. The flaws, the grain, the blur. These are now trust signals, not quality failures.
- 2Process over polish. Show the work. Show the mess. Show the human behind the output.
- 3Real over rendered. Captured moments beat generated ones. Presence beats perfection.
- 4Authenticity is the moat. AI can copy your aesthetic. It cannot copy your humanity.
What We Build
Authentic Brand Systems
Visual identities that embrace imperfection as a feature. Design systems that prove humanity.
Raw Content Strategies
Content approaches that prioritize real over rendered. Process visibility over polish.
Trust-First Experiences
Products designed to feel human. Interfaces that show their work.
Anti-Synthetic Design
Aesthetics that AI cannot easily replicate. The deliberately imperfect.
Is your brand brave enough to look human?
Or are you still optimizing for an aesthetic that now screams synthetic?
Based on Adam Mosseri's 2026 outlook memo posted on Threads and Instagram, December 31, 2025.
Share this perspective
More Insights
Perspectives on product design, technology, and the forces shaping how people interact with the things we build.
The polished era is over. The brands that embrace authenticity now will define the next decade of visual culture.