Divine Revives Vine Without AI: A Cryptographic Revolution

Divine bans AI to preserve human authenticity

Divine, the new app that aims to be the heir to Vine, has decided to ban videos generated by artificial intelligence. Vine, which was shut down in 2017 by Twitter, now X.com, due to a lack of a viable business model, is being reborn in a new form. Divine offers six-second looping videos and was launched on April 29 on iOS and Android. It has retrieved 500,000 videos from the Vine era and invites popular creators like Lele Pons, JimmyHere, MightyDuck, and Jack & Jack to join the platform.

Evan Henshaw-Plath, known as "Rabble," a former Twitter employee and founder of Divine, received financial support from Jack Dorsey through the open-source collective And Other Stuff. Divine uses Nostr, a decentralized protocol, to operate and relies on an innovative approach to ensure the authenticity of the videos.

A cryptographic verification for each video

On Divine, AI-generated content is strictly prohibited. Every video published on the platform comes with a label confirming its human creation, thanks to a cryptographic verification system called ProofMode. This method ensures technical authentication rather than mere trust, unlike TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, which integrate AI generation tools without restrictions.

JimmyHere, one of the creators present at launch, expresses his desire to recapture the original spirit of Vine, where authenticity and human creativity were at the heart of the content, free from the influence of large brand contracts or advanced technologies.

An invitation-only growth model

Access to Divine is by invitation only. Creators are the first to be invited, followed by their followers, thus recreating a network dynamic based on personal relationships rather than advertising algorithms. Rabble, the founder, emphasizes the importance of this approach to build a chosen community rather than an imposed one.

Unlike traditional social platforms that rely on algorithmic virality and advertising spending to grow, Divine allows creators to maintain control over their content and their followers while developing their own revenue sources. Jack Dorsey, who admitted to never having found a model for Vine, has learned from this failure to support Divine.

Lele Pons, whose career began on Vine, quickly expressed her interest in Divine by reaching out to Rabble within hours of the initial announcement last November. She highlights the impact of Vine on her personal trajectory and on internet culture. Currently, videos can be viewed on divine.video without an account, with a broader rollout planned in the coming months.