Elon Musk said on Thursday that X, the social media company he owns, is bringing back Vine in “AI form,” nearly nine years after the short-form video platform was shut down.
Musk made the announcement in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, without providing further details. He has previously posted polls asking users whether they want Vine to return.
A poll in October 2022 received nearly five million votes, with almost 70% in favour. He posted a similar poll in 2024 with a similar result.
Vine was launched in January 2013 after being acquired by Twitter for $30 million in 2012.
The platform allowed users to share looping videos up to six seconds long. It became popular among content creators and reached over 200 million active users by 2015.
Twitter discontinued the app in 2016 as it struggled to keep users and advertisers. Many creators moved to platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat.
Twitter turned Vine into a camera app in 2017, allowing users to record six-second videos but only post them to Twitter.
The archive of old Vine videos was removed in 2019. A Vine successor called Byte was launched in 2020 by co-founder Dom Hofmann but was discontinued in 2023 after rebranding multiple times.
Vine competed with other platforms like Instagram, which added 15-second videos in 2013, and Snapchat, which introduced video sharing in 2012. Vine also helped promote music and internet memes and was used by several companies for marketing.
Some of the platform’s most popular users, such as David Dobrik and Liza Koshy, found success on other platforms after Vine’s shutdown.
Musk’s new version of Vine is expected to use artificial intelligence, which could work well with the original six-second format. Most AI video tools currently focus on short clips, as longer videos are more expensive to produce.
X has not announced a release date or specific features for the AI version of Vine.