Featured Image Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images
Topics: Elon Musk, Social Media, News
Callum Jones
Elon Musk has made a somewhat surprising announcement that he is bringing back Vine - though there is a bit of a twist.
For those who aren't old enough to remember Vine, it's arguably an earlier form of TikTok that allowed users to create a wide variety of content in a short-form video.
Whether it be singing or dancing, Vine really was the place to be for teenagers growing up in the 2010s.
The likes of Shawn Mendes, King Bach and Jake Paul all made a name for themselves on the platform, while users of the Vine will of course know about 'look at all these chickens' or 'they were roommates'. If you know, you know.
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The platform was founded back in 2012 and was acquired by Twitter shortly after, but was closed down by the end of the decade, and all the videos that had ever been created and posted on the platform were archived.
Back in 2022, Musk posted a poll to X, formerly known as Twitter, asking fans if they would like to see Vine return.
Popular YouTuber MrBeast replied to Musk's poll, saying: "If you did that and actually competed with TikTok that’d be hilarious."
Musk said back: "What could we do to make it better than TikTok?"
Basically, the overall consensus was that fans wanted Vine back, and now Musk has granted them that wish - well, kinda.
The tech mogul announced on the social media platform he owns that Vine would be making a return but in the form of AI.
"We’re bringing back Vine, but in AI form," he penned.
The news has split opinion on X, amid the ongoing rise of the controversial form of technology.
"Vine isn't Vine without human creativity. AI doesn't create anything new," one opposer wrote, while a second added: "So a bunch of short AI generated clips to keep people sucked into their phones even more."
On the other hand, someone more positive regarding today's news penned on social media: "Could be interesting to see what AI comes up with and evolves into."
To be honest, you can see why many people would have their reservations regarding AI's involvement in the return of Vine given Musk's most recent AI experiment Grok has been used to post antisemitic rants online.
Musk launched Grok, based on the large language model (LLM) of the same name, back in 2023.
Similar to ChatGPT, it can answer help with answering questions and brainstorming.