Elon Musk will bring back the defunct short-video platform Vine — only this time with an artificial intelligence twist that could transform how users create and share content online.
The tech billionaire revealed Monday that his social media company X, formerly Twitter, found the full library of the six-second video app.
“We recently found the Vine video archive (thought it had been deleted) and are working on restoring user access, so you can post them if you want,” Musk wrote.
Last month, Musk said he was “bringing back Vine, but in AI form” to take on video app-sharing rivals TikTok and Instagram.
Musk’s post on X stoked excitement among former users of the beloved app, which Twitter shut down in 2017 after struggling to compete with newer platforms.
One X user urged Musk: “holy s–t just please bring back vine.”
“We need an AI VINE app elon,” another X user wrote.
Unlike the original Vine, which required users to film their own six-second clips, Musk’s reimagined version will harness AI to generate videos based on simple text descriptions.
Users could potentially type phrases like “a cat breakdancing in Times Square” or “Shakespearean drama in a McDonald’s” and watch as the system instantly creates corresponding video content complete with sound.
The technology driving this revival centers around Grok Imagine, a comprehensive text-to-video AI generator that operates through X’s chatbot system.
Early testing and demonstrations suggest the tool can produce creative and often viral short videos much faster than competing AI platforms, making it well-suited for Vine’s signature brief format.
Beta testing of Grok Imagine has shown promising results for generating whimsical and engaging content that could appeal to the same audience that made the original Vine a cultural phenomenon.
Musk’s posts about the relaunch of Vine racked up tens of millions of views.
Cryptocurrency traders jumped on meme coins connected to the announcement, while creators and old Vine fans celebrated the potential comeback.
Analysts see this as Musk’s play to make X a real threat to TikTok and Instagram Reels.
Vine originally took off because of its six-second limit, which forced people to get creative. The app launched countless internet stars before Twitter shut it down when it couldn’t make money or keep up with competitors.
Experts think AI could solve the problems that killed Vine the first time.
Instead of needing to film, edit, and polish videos yourself, anyone could just type an idea and get a finished product. It removes the biggest hurdle for casual users who wanted to create but didn’t have the skills or time.
This fits into Musk’s bigger plan to turn X into something much more than a text-based social network. Since buying the company, he’s been adding features left and right, trying to compete with every major platform out there.