It started as an experiment, Divine founder Evan Henshaw-Plath told me. He wanted to see if he could build an app that effectively filtered out AI slop.
The idea was to create a different kind of social media experience, one without AI-generated videos or super photos, which prioritizes authenticity over engagement. That’s what led him to Vine.
Vine, which rose to popularity in 2014, is one of the first online sites for short videos, known for its unpolished style and quirky humor. Even though the app was shut down in 2017, those old Vine videos are still around thanks to the Internet Archive. The Divine team worked with the people there to convert those archived videos into a more accessible format for later viewing.
“That’s how Divine is, where we are [asked]can we bring back these old videos? Can we bring back this old way of creating? And can we empower users to opt out of AI-generated content, to control their experience?” said Henshaw-Plath.
Now the app has been reimagined for the new digital age.
Called Divine — “di” meaning “of” in Italian and a sweet coincidence that sounds like “made for the vine” — the new video app is available for download on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. You can also watch videos on the website without an account. In addition to over 500,000 classic videos, you can find and share new videos.
Divine isn’t exactly like Vine, but it will feel familiar when scrolling through other social media apps like Instagram and TikTok.
The app’s initial announcement generated more excitement than nostalgia when the team behind Divine confirmed that it would have no AI — no weird AI videos to be seen. This is a high bar to reach, as AI-generated videos become more and more realistic. But it’s refreshing given how much of the internet is full of AI slop.
Here’s what you need to know.
Bringing Vine back, kinda
As with any site on the Internet, what makes Divine special is the people on it. Some of the biggest creators who started on Vine have returned to Divine, including Lele Pons and JimmyHere. Old videos from the likes of Logan Paul and Nash Grier are back, too.
“Many of us came from Vine, and it was the beginning of everything. It’s an icon app,” said Pons, a Venezuelan-American influencer. “It was an important moment in my personal journey, and in terms of Internet culture. I’m excited to see these classics brought back to life, and to have the opportunity to make new ones.”
The Divine app includes over 500,000 archived, classic Vine videos.
When creating the app, Henshaw-Plath and her team first tried to recreate the original Vine app as closely as possible: square videos, green color scheme, etc.
But social media has evolved a lot since the rise of Vine a decade ago, and the team felt it had to pivot at least a little to include industry-standard features — like editing tools that can overlay text and subtitles. But the basic, 6-second looped video format remains untouched.
The Divine app includes two camera modes: the classic square and the modern, vertical camera. You’ll want to film and edit videos within the Divine app, because the behind-the-scenes camera technology is the foundation of Divine’s other big promise: being an AI-free platform.
Keeping AI out of God
Social networks of all shapes and sizes have struggled to identify and label AI-generated content. Most of the big platforms — Instagram, YouTube, TikTok — allow people to post AI-generated content.
But it is controversial. Many people who use social media complain that this disempowers human creators and makes it difficult to tell what is true and what is false.
Divine’s plan to be a free AI social network is to limit the types of content shared. The platform uses a set of technologies called proof mode, which adds invisible watermarks to content as it is shot and verifies the origin of all videos uploaded to the site. An open source initiative from The Guardian Project that is also used by human rights and media organizations to verify suspicious media.
If the video you’re trying to upload doesn’t include invisible watermarks that confirm its authenticity, you won’t be able to share it. The Divine team knows that limiting its uploads may make it difficult for professional creators who edit in third-party programs, such as CapCut, to post videos, but they hope to be able to support uploads from other applications as they use content verification technology.
“AI-generated content is a big problem for everyone, not just Divine, and we need to change the way our technology works so we know what’s real,” said Henshaw-Plath. “If CapCut could support this technology, we would like to support publishing from there, but what is between us, the important thing is that it is true and authentic and human, so we use a lot of technology to maintain that case.”
A few third-party applications, such as Adobe Premiere, are compatible with authentication mode standards. But it will be easier for you to record and edit videos in Divine. Time will tell if Divine’s efforts to keep AI off the platform will be successful.
Social media has changed since those early days of Vine, and not just because of AI. Bringing back the Vine of 2026 meant intentionally designing the platform to be “information resistant,” Henshaw-Plath said, referring to the idea that our experience using online platforms is being deliberately degraded as tech companies monetize every part of the experience.
Part of that means that Divine avoids the advertiser model — so you shouldn’t see paid ads on the platform. Another aspect is giving users more control over their experience by building Divine on an open protocol called Nostr and working on a future update that will allow users to choose which algorithm creates their feed.
Overall, as Henshaw-Plath puts it, social media can and should be fun too. “We should have joyscrolling instead of doomscrolling,” he said.
