With the new "Replace Audio" tool, users can update the music on their post at any time while keeping the post's existing likes, comments, shares, and reach intact.
“Roxy” the AI time-traveling vlogger in front of the famed Crocodile Cafe music venue in what’s supposed to be 1992 Seattle. (@roxyintime via Instagram)
The best thing about Seattle’s grunge era is that it existed before the internet could completely spoil it — although the mainstream media, MTV and fashion designers eventually did their best.
None of them would be any match today for artificial intelligence.
In a new video we spotted on Instagram, a time-traveling vlogger under the handle Roxy In Time goes back to 1992 Seattle to explore the city’s music scene during its heyday. The result is grunge meets 2026 AI slop.
It’s an interesting study in how technology that’s very much being built and hyped in modern Seattle can be used to illustrate what the city sort of looked like more than three decades ago. In the video, it’s two years before the start of Amazon and another 15ish before cloud computing and a massive tech boom truly reshaped the region.
AI is being both celebrated and derided for its ability to help create content like Roxy’s time-traveling exploits. Where some see an innocent, weirdly educational history lesson, others can’t look past the replacement of human creativity, the excess of such material polluting social media channels, and the tech’s ability to deceive viewers in more dangerous ways.
Roxy is an AI-generated influencer — not a real person — with a penchant for visiting historically significant places, both real and imagined. She recently checked out L.A.’s Sunset Strip in 1987 and a New York speakeasy during Prohibition in 1929. In other videos she runs across fantastical figures including Paul Bunyan and Humpty Dumpty, and she visits cavemen in 30,000 B.C.
In the Seattle video, Roxy is dressed for the era’s part in a flannel, Nirvana T-shirt, ripped jeans and combat boots. She starts her tour by saying she’s in town to see the band Mudhoney play at Belltown’s Crocodile Cafe. But first she heads to Easy Street Records in West Seattle to browse records, tapes and CDs.
The video is populated with images of random musicians carrying guitars down the street, and people drinking coffee and reading actual print publications instead of staring at laptops. At The Central Saloon and OK Hotel in Pioneer Square, everyone has long hair, or a beanie, or both. Sweaty music fans in mosh pits seem to fit the timeline.
AI’s vision of 1992 Seattle: No laptops at the cafe! Garbled words on flyers! The grunge pit! (Screenshots via @roxyintime)
AI’s artistic limitations do come into focus in a few spots, especially when written words are displayed. The names of bands and clubs on music flyers — such as Comet Tavern — are a jumbled mess. Same goes for some of the names on record dividers at Easy Street, where the store’s neon wording also breaks apart.
Back at the Crocodile, Roxy is in line to see Mudhoney, and she’s confused by an opening act named Pen Cap Chew. Inside, as the show starts, she realizes that Pen Cap Chew is actually Nirvana, playing under the secret moniker because by that time the band was a worldwide sensation riding the success of the album “Nevermind.”
In perhaps the most realistic demonstration of being in 1992 — in a club where no one knows what a smartphone is yet — Roxy ends the video by saying she needs to stop recording.
“I’m putting this thing away, I’ve gotta watch this,” she says.
Australia's online safety watchdog says Instagram and WhatsApp top the sextortion complaint list, while teens are being targeted through iMessage and Snapchat.
EU regulators preliminarily found Meta’s Facebook and Instagram design addictive, raising the prospect of app changes and a potential $12.1 billion fine.
EU regulators preliminarily found Meta’s Facebook and Instagram design addictive, raising the prospect of app changes and a potential $12.1 billion fine.
"Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public content could be referenced in this way," the company said in a blog post. "We've heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it's no longer available."
The European Union is ramping up pressure on Meta to make big changes to Facebook and Instagram after the European Commission preliminarily found that features like autoplay, infinite scroll, and highly personalized content recommendations were addictive.
On Thursday, the EC said its investigation indicated that “Meta did not adequately assess the risks of its addictive design on the physical and mental wellbeing of users, including minors and vulnerable adults.”
“These features fuel the user's urge to keep scrolling and shift the brain into ‘autopilot mode,' contributing to unhealthy habits and compulsive use,” the commission said.
The tech giant is in breach of the Digital Services Act by focusing on features like infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and the highly personalized recommendation algorithms, the European Commission said.
These two Instagram settings can help limit how your photos and facial data are used for AI training. Here's where to find them and why you should review them today.
Muse Image allows users to generate AI images using photos from public Instagram accounts. As long as a person's profile is public, another user can tag that account and use their images as part of an AI-generated creation.
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