Instagram's New Algorithm Penalizes AI-Written Content — And You Probably Don't Know You're Doing It

Something on Instagram broke. If you've been creating content and felt the engagement floor drop out from under you over the last few months, this is why.

Hey Dominik just dropped a video analyzing over 40,000 reels across every performance tier. The pattern he found is genuinely alarming, and the worst part is the things killing growth right now are things most of us are doing on purpose — usually because somebody told us to.

The Algorithm Got Smarter — Specifically Against AI

Up until recently, Instagram's algorithm worked by pattern-matching: it looked at your content, figured out the topic, found the audience that liked that topic, and pushed your video to them. Topic match + image recognition. That was basically it.

Now it's doing something completely different. Dominik explains it like this: Instagram uses AI to analyze your script at a deeper level. The actual words. The intonation. The structure. The patterns inside the script. Then it checks — has someone else said this exact thing recently? Is the language generic? Does it feel like AI wrote it?

If your content shows enough of those signals, you get tagged "low quality" and dropped into a bucket. It's very hard to get out of that bucket. Doesn't matter how clean your thumbnail is. Doesn't matter how good the hook is. The system has already decided.

The Two Behaviors Killing Accounts

Dominik found that almost every struggling account in his sample was guilty of at least one of these two things:

1. Copying top-performing content. Recreating hooks. Recreating the script. "Find a viral video, do your version of it." That advice worked three months ago. Now it actively buries you.

2. Using AI to generate scripts and hooks. Going to Claude or ChatGPT and saying "give me ten reel ideas about [topic]." Polishing your hooks with AI. Letting an LLM write the actual words.

This hits me directly because I've absolutely done both. I've leaned hard into AI to scale my content — and that's been a genuine game-changer for me personally for distribution work like newsletters and repurposing. But there's a clean line between using AI as an engine (taking your real human ideas and amplifying them) and using AI as a script writer (handing it a topic and posting whatever comes out).

Dominik puts it this way: people have developed a sixth sense for AI-written content. Even when a real person reads the script out loud, viewers can tell. They can't always explain why something feels off — "the lifeblood is missing," he calls it. "Uncanny valley but for scripts."

The Third Force Nobody's Talking About

This is the part of the video that kept Dominik up at night, and it's the one I'm still chewing on.

When someone wants to learn how to lose weight or grow an Instagram, they don't open Instagram first anymore. They open ChatGPT. By the time they show up on Instagram, they already have 90% of the information they wanted, tailored to their specific situation.

So when they scroll past your generic "5 tips to grow your business" reel, it's not that they're bored. It's that ChatGPT already gave them a better, more personalized version of that same advice an hour ago. You're not competing with other creators anymore. You're competing with the AI your audience already used before they opened the app.

That reframes everything.

What Actually Works Now: Content DNA

Dominik's solution is a frame he calls content DNA. The idea is to stop looking at top performers in your niche and start looking at top performers outside your niche — adjacent industries, or sometimes completely unrelated worlds.

Then you decompose what makes those videos work:

• What's the hook structure?
• What's the format?
• What's the energy?
• What's the unique angle?

And you import those building blocks into your niche.

His client Simon was in fitness — one of the most saturated niches on the platform. Doing everything by the book: hooks, pattern interrupts, props, contrarian angles. Wasn't moving. Then he started reacting to viral content from completely unrelated niches and bringing that energy into fitness. One video — a cucumber recipe, of all things — hit 17.5 million views. Same person, same topic area, totally different content DNA. He's now at 200K+ followers.

The algorithm couldn't pattern-match Simon against other fitness creators. So it pushed him.

What I'd Add From My Own Stuff

The move I keep watching work in my own ecosystem is what I'd call scar content. Same idea Dominik is pointing at, just from a different angle. When I post about something that actually went wrong in my own business — a funnel that flopped, a launch I bombed, a client situation I handled badly — those posts move. When I post a generic carousel that says "5 things every funnel needs," it dies. Even if I wrote every word myself.

The through-line is that AI can replicate the second post. It can't replicate the first one. Because it doesn't have my scars.

Dominik says the same thing slightly differently: AI can't give your audience a reason to come back to you specifically. That's the one thing no model can replace. Your audience trusts ChatGPT. They don't trust you yet. So if your content sounds like ChatGPT, you've lost before you've started.

How to Use AI Without Getting Buried

My own rule going forward:

• AI for distribution: yes. Turning my video into 8 social posts, summarizing my transcript into a newsletter, drafting subject lines. Fine.
• AI for the original idea or script: no. That has to come from me, with my actual scars and stories baked in.

If the input is real, the AI-amplified output stays real. If the input is just a prompt, the AI-amplified output is the dead generic content the algorithm is now actively filtering out.

The Bottom Line

The playing field on Instagram is being leveled in a way nobody has ever seen. Creators with zero following six months ago are blowing up because they're allowed to be weird, specific, and human. The creators who were dominating six months ago by following the playbook are getting buried — because the playbook is the exact thing the algorithm is now penalizing. The window is open right now. It will close. Bring your scars, not your scripts.