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Hey there and welcome back to another episode of the Simplepen podcast. Today we're going to dive into all the latest updates on Pinterest as it relates to AI. The discussion about AI and Pinterest has not been scarce. From AI slop hitting the platform via bad actors to how Pinterest is going to combat that slope, there's no shortage of conversation starters around this topic. So in order to get everyone on the same page about what AI updates have been made to Pinterest, I figured this would be a good level setting podcast video for me to record. So you know where to find the latest resources as well as developments that have taken place. I'm also going to include help desk articles from Pinterest and some great journalism done around this topic. I'm going to have them linked below in the description. For those who are super curious fact finders, there is actually eight articles that we have surfaced based on the latest updates. Now if you're new to Pinterest and this whole AI Pinterest discussion is new for you, maybe you have not heard a lot of people talking about it and you're just wondering how do I start getting my pins onto Pinterest? This is a great place to start. I want you to go watch our free four part video series. For those who are brand new to Pinterest, think of it like a Pinterest 101 series. It's totally free. Just simply go to simplepinmedia.com start and you'll sign up. And you'll after you sign up, you'll immediately be added to a page where you where you can view those videos. Don't forget to confirm your email to go back to your inbox so you can get our emails that will accompany those videos and give you some tips. It's kind of like you can binge your Pinterest 101 series. All right there don't feel like you need to understand all of Pinterest right away. And AI and what I'm going to talk about can sometimes feel really, really confusing. So all that said, you can go ahead and dive into the Start series first and then you can come back and listen to this episode. Okay, so for those who are super curious about all the latest updates with AI and Pinterest, we're going to go through them as well as our reader and listener feedback. So we have a dedicated email for both customer service and questions that people want to send us. It is helloimpleplepenmedia.com we answer that every single day. I don't answer it personally. But I do see all the emails. We have discussions about them, and we actually take what it is we're learning from people submitting questions, and we pull them into podcasts or pull them into training or even products or into working with clients. So I've done that today where I've taken the most questions we have received, and I'm going to kind of like some summarize them, and then I'll give you the article, I give you the update about where Pinterest is at. But before we dive into that, I want to share some thoughts with you about how I am viewing AI globally, generally, not just about Pinterest overall. And I had an epiphany, actually, this morning when I was coming home from the gym. So the other day, I was super curious about what AI could do. And. And I have this idea in my head that everything is possible, right? And in that moment, I realized, oh, not everything is possible. Sure, it can write blog posts, it can automate pinning, it can create great pin images, it can create crap on the Internet, or it can help me plan my trip to the Grand Cayman or plan out a party. But could it replace my onboarding of clients? And I want to say really quickly that the onboarding of clients within our company has been a process that we have refined over and over and over for the last 11 years. It is very near and dear to my heart. I read a great book ages ago for those of you who are in the service industry, called Never Lose a Customer Again. I took that to heart, and one of the things they said was that during onboarding, your customers will have buyer's remorse, and you don't want to fuel that. And so you need to make sure that your onboarding is very carefully curated. It's very, very high touch. It leads people through the process in a very delicate way that shows that you really care about them. You didn't just want the sale, but you really want to get to know them. You want to intake all of their information. So could AI essentially help that process, or could it help facilitate tricky HR situations? And what I surfaced in just asking a few really smart people these questions was that, no, not yet. So as we wade into the waters of the latest with AI and Pinterest, keep in mind that things are ever evolving. It's always a not yet, it's not a never. There will always be bad actors, there will be changes. But the hope is that we stay curious, we stay open to learning, and know that every company, both large and small, are doing what they can to take the good with the bad, or maybe take the good and filter out the bad. Now, this is not a defense of Pinterest, but it's in defense of small businesses as we go through a time in history that we've never seen before, we've never been here, so may we all have grace for ourselves as entrepreneurs and those who are learning alongside us. I get that this is a weird time and it is a frustrating time. So I want to start with a question from a reader and I think this kind of is the top of the umbrella. Their question is, Pinterest is being overrun by AI. It is awful. Is anyone at Pinterest doing anything to filter this garbage out? This probably sums up what many of you have already asked in your mind previous to this podcast episode, and the short answer is it's all about the Pinner experience. So if a bad experience is happening, then yes. So I want to break down in detail for you what I've observed and what I've seen. As a reminder, I don't speak for Pinterest. Yes, I am on the educator team right now as an educator, helping to break down concepts and ideas that make them easier for people to learn. But I am not a spokesperson, but I am an observer as to what I see in the conversations I see happening. And they very much care about the Pinner experience. So I want to make sure I'm super clear on that. Also, if you haven't listened to my podcast about how I view AI content on Pinterest, I have a link below for that too. So I highly suggest you go listen to my thoughts there. I'm not going to recap them here, but updates on a high level here are going to help you see what Pinterest is doing. So there are four things right now as of the recording of this podcast, we have Gen AI labels. Now when a user clicks on an image in a close up, they will see a label that is AI modified in the bottom left corner. We're going to go deeper into this in just a minute, but I want to kind of high level go through all of these changes. So when Pinterest believes that this gen this was generated or modified with AI, they will put a label on this. To do that they analyze the images metadata, but also develop classifiers that automatically detect generative AI content, even if the content doesn't have obvious markers. You can learn about the Geni labels in the link below. So there's also a Geni labels appeals process. So for those people who have been caught up in this labeling of AI, but you did not create it with AI. There is an appeal system. We'll put the link below and if you want all of these links too, you can go to simplepinmedia.com430 this is where the blog blog post will live. You can find that there. See Fewer Options is another one. So See Fewer AI Pin Options this has been something that educators have really wanted for a long time. They're going to launch this experiment soon. This will allow users to see fewer options that are generative AI for certain categories prone to AI modifications such as beauty and art that sends a signal to their system to recommend less of that type of content. They plan to continue expanding in more areas over the coming months. So just a note there, the See Fewer AI Pins option as the time of recording the end of May that's not been released yet Pinterest Canvas Data Training Opt out so AI models get better and better over time through research and real world learning. And so when you save or upload content to Pinterest, they may use it to improve the accuracy, safety and overall performance of Pinterest Canvas. However, they have launched a way for people to opt out of this at any time and those who are under the age of 18, they're automatically opted out of this setting. So those are the high level four recent changes we have seen Pinterest say that they're making and I'm going to break them down. So first let's start with the Pinterest Canvas. I always get it confused with Canva because we use that all the time too. And what's training its AI model. So besides the obvious images and videos shared as pins on the platform, the company also collects your information precise location, context, device information, log data, cookie information, and a lot more. In fact, almost every app that you use in your tiny little phone does the same thing. While the clause about machine learning training has been part of the current privacy policy, the section specifically about generative AI was only added within the latest update and that reflects the ongoing drive of mission many companies to collect as much user data as possible. So according to the new Terms of Service, together these changes mean that regardless of how Pinterest uses your images and videos, whether for ads, generative AI training, or anything else, the company can monetize your content but won't receive any compensation. Should you agree to these terms, but you won't receive any compensation. I did some digging on Meta and their terms of service and what they have, and it's generally the Same. In fact, they updated their terms of service in January 1st of 2025, whereas Pinterest doing this in the end of April with a lot stronger, more specific language about their rights to user content, including AI training purposes. So the reason I bring this up is that we've received this wave in this flood of people being really frustrated by Pinterest in this announcement of Pinterest Canvas. But I just want to remind you that you are already doing this under Instagram, TikTok and all the other platforms, Meta and Facebook that you're using, right? So it's a non exclusive licensed language. There's all of this. Now you can turn it off, right? At any time. You just go into your settings and you turn it off and you say, I do not want any of my content being used in this way to train the AI model. Now this doesn't necessarily get you out of the terms of service agreement. When you use any platform, you agree to their terms of service. Now there's been lots of, I believe there's been some Supreme Court stuff on this as it related to Twitter. Now, X there's a lot of that and obviously I'm not going to go into it, but I'm just going to say that for Pinterest Canvas and the training, I understand that some people might want to turn it off. So someone had messaged us and said as an artist, they were pretty frustrated about Pinterest updating their terms of service that will allow AI training on those user pins, similar to policies that have already caused them to limit posting on Instagram and Facebook. So I appreciated that this artist was saying, I've gone through this already with Instagram and Facebook, I don't want to use it. I was hoping not to encounter it on Pinterest. They had viewed Pinterest as a safer alternative, but now they feel disappointed and they're questioning whether or not any social media platform remains safe for artists to share their work. So that's a tough question. I really can't answer that for anybody. That's every person's decision. And I would actually argue that creators are similar to artists. We are creating something from ourselves, from scratch that have our own spin on it. And I, I think anything can be copied, anything can be replicated. In fact, we're seeing actual people have their name mistake and they're like being copied in these deep fake videos too. I think what it is is to start to train your audience maybe a little bit as to what to look for. And that's limiting too, because you Only get to train your audience who's listening to you. So I don't necessarily have a solid answer for this, but I will say that if you want to opt out of this for your particular set of content or your images or whatever it is, that you don't want Pinterest to train its AI model on your content, opt out of it. As far as the other pieces, there's really not much you can do about that. We all agree to use these platforms, so that's a tough one. So, yep, just go into your settings and opt out. Let's jump to labeling AI. So here's what people have been telling us. Y' all are pleased that Pinterest is finally implementing AI content labeling. You like it as you want to make sure they are distinguished, your images are distinguished from real or AI generated images. I will say as a user, I really appreciate it because especially if I'm looking at landscaping design, I want to see what somebody did. I want to know that somebody got out the shovel, they sweated their face off and they paid the money and they built this beautiful backyard. I don't want it to be AI because then I don't even know if it's possible. I don't know what the troubleshooting is. I don't know what tools they use. I want to know. So that is important to me. However, users are frustrated by the prevalence of unlabeled AI content and that depicts impossible or impractical designs like structurally flawed tiny homes or fantastical landscapes. Oh my gosh. That mislead viewers who don't examine images closely. I agree. Pinterest are our artists are particularly concerned about their copyrighted work being used to train AI without consent. That's back to canvas, so go ahead and turn it off. Users prefer human created content for inspiration because it represents achievable goals, unlike AI generated images that may depict possible scenarios and they like clear distinctions between fully AI generated versus AI modified. That is great feedback and we are going to pass that on to the Pinterest team. I understand there are ways now that they are scraping metadata that they are able to produce images that get around these AI filters. I think that's what I talked about a little bit in the beginning is that this is ever evolving, it is ever changing. And I think as we lean into one baby steps of this, we're going to get smarter and smarter and smarter as to not only from a user perspective, how to distinguish it, but also I would say from a algorithm perspective as well. So then that leads to the user experience of filtering out the garbage of the see fewer AI pins options. So Pinterest has said as a reminder, they will soon launch an experiment allowing users to select few see fewer pins that are generative AI for certain categories that are prone to modification. Beauty and arts. I just recently had my makeup done for a photo shoot and I was talking with a woman about what she's seen and I said, are you still getting people coming in bringing you Instagram photos of these amazing photos? And in. I'm going to pause here, like, put a pin in that. In the olden days, right, like 20 years ago or even 15 years ago, the conversation was about Photoshopping. It was about photoshopping images and they weren't realistic. So technically we're on the same playing field of AI images of people that are not realistic. And that's what she said. She goes, I no longer see those Instagram images where it's heavily filtered or doctored. Now it's just straight up AI. There's literally no way I can make someone's skin look like that. It's just. It is physically impossible. So having this option to filter out those AI images, especially within beauty and art, will be so helpful. I don't know what it's going to look like just because they're going to launch an experiment soon, but I think that's going to be so great for users who want authentic content. So I'm, I'm really excited about this change and I'm looking forward to it. I think it'll also be. I plan to do some education here around it when it comes out, but I think for those in the beauty and the artist space, it would be great if you have a high Pinterest audience to educate them about this to say, did you know this was possible? I know you found my stuff on Pinterest and I love that we want to make sure that authenticity is raining on in beauty, right? That it's not these impossible, unattainable images that are created by robots. So here's how you use it. So just tuck that away that when it does start to release, think of yourself too, as an educator about how to help your users navigate these changes. In fact, somebody has asked me that before. They're like, how do I help my audience learn a little bit about distinguishing AI from non AI? There's things that you can do, you know, you like, even if you're in the food space, the travel space, do a quick couple blurbs, like, do it on Instagram, do it even on A blog post. If you have a Facebook group, do a little bit of education for your people, I think that helps because some people don't know. They are not aware of what is happening. So this isn't necessarily. Well, it isn't necessarily a change that Pinterest has made. I mean, it's definitely kind of a response to AI Slop. And what somebody asked me, like, is Pinterest aware They have made public comments on these great articles that have been written, so they are aware of it. And I understand users are frustrated about not addressing the core problem of the bot networks constantly copying and reposting content despite repeated reports through the official channels. I don't have a solution for that. And I, I know it's on their radar. So it is frustrating. I'm never going to endorse AI Slop. I think it's garbage. I think it ruins the experience for the rest of the platform. I think AI can be used responsibly. In fact, I addressed that in the podcast that I did before, so go listen to that. So what people have told us is they're not necessarily, necessarily concerned about AI tools, but they're concerned about the way that these are misused. And I think everybody is on the same page about this being a problem. We haven't heard yet what Pinterest is going to do, but I think these steps that I've just outlined above are getting us closer and closer to a great solution. Now, I pulled some statements from the Q1 2025 earnings call and what Pinterest said about AI during that call to get kind of an understanding about how they see it, because I don't think it's always just the negative. We have to be on the defensive. But I think there's some offensive stuff, some good things that they're leaning into, and I think that has to be a little bit of a takeaway for all of our businesses. There has to be the good with the bad when it comes to AI. So here's kind of a summary of things that they said. Pinterest positions AI as a core competitive advantage that has delivered their best product market fit in years by personalizing user experience and providing advertisers with early consumer trend insights. They are heavily investing in a multi modal. Multi modal. I think that's how you say that AI models that combine image and text data for visual search, claiming the proprietary model that they have is the 30% more effective at identifying relative content than the leading alternatives. Okay, that's pretty good because that goes back to the Pinner experience. How do we make sure this is really relevant content to what the Pinner wants? AI is driving significant improvements in ad performance. There is Performance Plus. I have also done a podcast on this. If you're interested in ads and you want to do Performance plus, it's their new like AI product. Don't do it alone. Aaron, who is our lead with Pinterest Ads here on our team, book a consult with her. I cannot stress that enough because you want to make sure you are set up before you just turn these bad boys on and then let them run because you're like, it's AI, it's going to be amazing. Nope, don't do that. But they are seeing significant improvements with that tool and a better user understanding and prediction of optimal ad timing, while also powering whole page optimization, which is pretty cool, they say. Internally, AI has dramatically increased productivity with over 25% of their new code now AI generated. That's up 10 points since early 2025. Pinterest emphasizes that AI helped them establish them as a shopping destination, particularly for Gen Z users, resulting in record user numbers and engagement levels. The company frames AI as fundamental to both user experience improvements and advertiser performance gains across their platform. That was a beast. There was a lot of information in there and maybe you were driving, maybe you were walking, maybe you were trying to work at the same time as this. For those people who can work and listen to podcasts at the same time, you are my superheroes. For those of you who are processing all of this, I guess I want to leave you with this if you only take these things away. One, yes, Pinterest is aware of the crap that's on there. Two, they are working to make it the best Pinner experience. And when it's a good Pinner experience, it's a good business experience. And you cannot have a good business experience without a good pinner experience. That has to come first. And so AI modified labels, Pinterest, Canvas, all of these things serve to make that really good so that you as a creator, you as a merchant, you as a seller on Pinterest, you can do great things to get to this end audience, right? But I also understand this is happening not just on Pinterest, but it's happening on Google. It's happening everywhere. And it can feel like the walls are coming in on a business model that you might have had for years. I have been in this industry of blogging for 15 years. There has been a lot that has changed and it feels like it is just revving up even faster. So I empathize with those of us who have done things a certain way and that is just being turned on its side. Get curious, ask questions, what, lean in. I really believe that's the way we're going to navigate through this and keep your end user in mind. Keep them in the forefront. I try to do that every single time I record a podcast here. I try to empathize with where you are at. I try to understand what it is you're struggling with and how I can alleviate just a little bit for you to help you keep going forward if that's what you're meant to do, and navigate these bumpy waters. I'm sure I will have another update on AI in the fall because things move quite fast and I'm committed to bringing you the latest information. If you have not subscribed to our newsletter, that is the place where I am sharing it weekly. And actually the links that we are sharing or the links that are coming to my desk are greater and greater and greater. So we're passing those on to you in that weekly newsletter called Pinterest Made Simple. Simply scroll down below in the description, find the one that says newsletter and sign up for that. Comes every Wednesday. Has very brief to read, but it also has things that will just keep you high level connected with what's happening on Pinterest. Thank you so much for listening to the Simple Pin podcast, Sam.