Do it for “Da Vine”: Divine, the AI-free video and Vine archive app, is now available

It started as an experiment, Divine co-founder Evan Henshaw Plath told me. He wanted to see if he could create an app that effectively filtered out AI waste.

The idea was to create a different kind of social media experience, one without AI-generated videos or perfect photos, one that prioritizes authenticity over engagement. This is what led him back to Vine.

Vine, whose popularity peaked around 2014, was one of the original online places for short-form videos, known for its unpolished style and quirky sense of humor. Although there is an app It closed in 2017These old Vine videos still exist thanks to the Internet Archive. The Divine team worked with the people there to convert archived videos into an accessible format so they can be watched again.

“That’s how Divine came about, where (we were asked), can we bring back these old videos? Can we bring back this old way of creating? And can we enable users to not see AI-generated content, to control their experience?” Henshaw Plath said.

Now the application has been redesigned to suit the new digital age.

Called Divine — as in “do it for the Vine” — the new video app is available for download in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. You can also watch videos on the site Without an account. In addition to over 500,000 classic videos, you can find and share new ones.

Divine isn’t exactly like Vine, but it will be familiar when scrolling through other social media apps like Instagram and TikTok.

Initial announcement of the application Excitement generated Beyond simple nostalgia when the team behind Divine confirmed it would be AI-free – no weird AI videos to be seen. This is a big goal to reach, as AI-generated videos become increasingly realistic. But it’s a refreshing stance considering the size of the Internet Full of AI slop.

Here’s what you need to know.

Re-Vine, sort of

As with any online space, what makes Divine special are the people in it. Some of the biggest creators who started using Vine are back on Divine, including Lele Pons and JimmyHere. Old videos from people like Logan Paul and Nash Grier have also returned.

“A lot of us came from Vine, which was the start of everything,” said Ponce, a Venezuelan-American influencer. “It’s an iconic app.” “It was an important moment in my personal journey, and in internet culture. I’m so happy to see these early classics brought back to life, and to have the opportunity to make new works.”

When creating the app, Henshaw-Plath and his team initially tried to recreate the original Vine app as closely as possible: square videos, lime green color scheme, etc.

But social media has evolved a lot since Vine’s heyday more than a decade ago, and the team knew they had to pivot at least a little to include features that are now industry-standard — like editing tools that can overlay text and subtitles. But the basic 6-second video format remains unchanged.

Divine also includes two camera modes: the classic square and the modern portrait camera. You’ll want to shoot and edit videos inside the Divine app, because the behind-the-scenes camera technology is central to Divine’s other big promise: being an AI-free platform.

Keeping AI away from the divine

Social media platforms of all shapes and sizes have struggled to identify and categorize AI-generated content. The majority of major platforms – Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok – allow people to post AI-generated content.

But it is controversial. Many social media users complain that it overwhelms human creators and makes it difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is fake.

Divine’s plan to be an AI-free social media site is to limit the types of content that is shared. The platform uses a set of technologies called Proof Mode, which adds invisible watermarks to content as it is captured and verifies the origins of each video uploaded to the platform. It is an open source initiative from Guardian Project It is also used by human rights organizations and media outlets to verify suspicious media.

If the video you’re trying to upload doesn’t have the invisible watermarks confirming its authenticity, you won’t be able to share it. The Divine team knows that limiting uploads may make it difficult for professional creators who edit in third-party apps, like CapCut, to publish videos, but they hope they can support uploads from other apps as they adopt content verification technology.

“AI-generated content is a huge problem for everyone, not just Divine, and we need to change the way our technology works so we can know what’s real,” Henshaw-Plath said. “If CapCut supports this technology, we would love to support publishing from there, but our central and important thing is for it to be real, authentic and human, so we use a range of technology to keep it that way.”

Some third-party applications, such as Adobe Premiere, comply with proof mode standards. But it will be easier for you to shoot 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 the early days of Vine, and not just because of artificial intelligence. Bringing Vine back for 2026 means intentionally designing the platform to be “sensation-proof,” Henshaw-Plath said, referring to the theory that our experience of using online platforms has been intentionally degraded as tech companies monetize every part of the experience.

Part of that means avoiding the divinity of the advertiser model — so you shouldn’t see paid ads on the platform. Another part is giving users more control over their experiences by building Divine on an open protocol called Nostr and working on a future update that will allow users to choose the algorithm that creates their feeds.

And all in all, as Henshaw Plath said, social media can and should be fun again. “We should have a joy pass instead of a death pass,” he said.