The synthetic scroll has arrived with Meta’s Vibes and OpenAI’s Sora — marketers are watching nervously

Marketers, for once, didn’t jump in. But they didn’t ignore it either, They’re curious, cautious and conflicted. Vibes and Sora clearly mark a shift in attention. But with every leap forward comes more complexity: fragmented platforms, blurred lines of control, and an open question — what even counts as “content” now? 

Here’s how marketers are responding: 

It’s making marketers nervous: The worry, even among marketers, is that these tools aren’t ushering in a new creative renaissance — they’re accelerating a race to the bottom. Volume over value. Engagement over a meaning. A feed full of something that looks like content but isn’t saying much at all.

“The biggest fear isn’t the tech, it’s what happens when production costs collapse and content floods the market,” said Craig Elimeliah, chief creative officer at Code and Theory. “The real client questions are: How do we protect taste? How do we protect trust? How do we avoid drowning in a sea of sameness?”

Call it what it is: slop: That’s the subtext humming beneath all the excitement around Meta’s Vibes and OpenAI’s Sora. For every breathless post about the future of creativity, there’s a quiet resignation setting in — that this is what the internet has become. Not content. Not storytelling. Just an infinite stream of AI-generated video engineered to keep people swiping, eyes glazed, attention monetized.

Or as Jon Williams, CEO of the Liberty Guild, put it: “I’m sure my clients haven’t had time to react and form an opinion. Which is half of the problem: evolution is so fast it feels like a revolution every week or so. Being bathed in a never ending stream of hyper personalized synthetic content would have me reaching for the eject button personally — let’s not kill serendipity and happenstance please.”

This is the future of social media: These feeds are what the future of social media looks like, whether anyone’s ready for it or not. For the full breakdown, read Digiday’s Tim Peterson, who unpacks what the Vibes launch signals. But here’s the short version: the world is moving from the social graph to the synthetic scroll. Whether brands belong in these places — or how they even show up — is still an open question. But the broader shift is hard to ignore. 

“With tools like Meta’s Vibes tab and OpenAI’s Sora feed, we’re seeing something profound: high-quality, on-demand video created by anyone, anywhere, in seconds,” said Wayne Deakin, independent creative director. “Ideas once locked in imagination are becoming moving images, instantly.”

This is the future of brand safety and misinformation: Yes, the world is on the edge of a new creative era, but it comes with a familiar undercurrent: scale first, safeguards later. As AI-generated AI video floods platforms, the risks around misinformation, deepfakes and context collapse grows. In just days, Sora users have generated everything from Tupac Shakur to Pikachu — no rights, no permissions, no oversight. For marketers, the promise of reach comes with a new kind of exposure, and fewer guarantees about where and how a brand shows up.

“The smartest teams see AI video as more than just a shiny new creative toy,” said Tammy H. Nam, CEO of AI agency Creatopy. “They’re treating it as the front door to a bigger transformation in how campaigns are built and run. We’re heading toward a world where marketing systems operate continuously — adapting and optimizing in real time — and AI sits at the center of that engine.” 

There’s no clear playbook for what comes next: Social media 3.0 is arriving faster than most marketers can process, and the usual frameworks — reach, engagement and distribution — are already starting to feel outdated. What’s emerging instead is a shift in posture. The line between brand content, creator content and user content is eroding into a single, generative ecosystem. As Elimeliah explained: “We’re building AI native creative supply chains where every asset is alive, remixable and strategically connected. Growth is going to come from coherence, not volume. AI video will change social media the way the camera on our phones did.”

Creativity is being reshaped — codified, compressed and in some cases warped beyond recognition: the rise of AI video comes as marketers and platforms accelerate the automation of the creative process. Everyone’s chasing efficiency. But the tradeoffs are becoming harder to ignore. 

“There will be instances when automation makes total sense e.g. there is no compromise or it’s at an acceptable level,” said Anthony Freedman, CEO of marketing services group Common Interest. There will be other cases when something that takes more time and costs more money but benefits from the artisanal approach will be worthwhile and better deliver on objectives. 

As with any wave of tech disruption, the initial turbulence is expected. Over time, the market will settle into a hybrid model — some blend of human ingenuity and machine speed, said Freedman. But how that balance plays out will vary by brand, audience and context, he added. 

Do brands still matter? That’s the question circling every conversation right now, and more often than not, the answer is yes. Maybe even more than before. Deakin said it bluntly: “AI won’t replace brands. It will reveal them.” 

Because technology doesn’t build great brands. Vision does. 

“I’ve been lucky to help build brands that last the test of time and lead categories and it’s essential that you understand how the foundations of your brand are going to show up in this new landscape,” continued Deakin. “Going by old playbooks just won’t cut it anymore. Your foundation glues everything together and your distinctive assets help signal it’s really from you.”