Instagram Reels Chaining AI system

UPDATED NOV 11, 2025

The content you see on your Instagram Reels Chaining is selected, ranked and delivered to you by an artificial intelligence (AI) system. Within one AI system, multiple machine learning models work together to deliver your experience. These models and their input signals are dynamic and they change frequently as the system learns and improves over time.

Overview of Instagram Reels Chaining

When you view and interact with Instagram, one of the underlying AI systems is Reels Chaining, which will give you an immersive, personalized, entertaining experience in Reels.

How Instagram Reels Chaining works

The AI system behind Instagram Reels Chaining automatically determines which reels show up, and in what order, by predicting what you’re most likely to be interested in or engage with. These predictions are based on a variety of factors, including what and whom you’ve followed, liked or engaged with recently. Here’s how it works:

Gather inventory
First, the system collects all potential reels you might be interested in. This content may include reels from people or accounts you follow, or reels that are similar to those you’ve recently engaged with.
Leverage signals
Next, the AI system considers a variety of input signals about each reel. These signals might include the length of the reel, similarity to other reels and how well the reel matches content you tend to interact with. A lightweight model is run to select approximately 100 of the most relevant reels. The system also applies certain integrity processes to remove content that is non-recommendable or that may go against our Community Guidelines.
Make predictions
From there, the AI system has models that help it make predictions about content you’ll find most relevant and valuable.
Rank reels by score
Finally, the system calculates a relevance score for about 100 reels and puts them in order by this score. Reels that the system predicts will provide more value for you are shown sooner.

How to customize what you see

Your experience on Instagram Reels Chaining is personalized based on your activity, and you have options to control or customize what you see. Below, we describe how to do this with different in-product features. Options shown here may not be available to everyone.

See newest reels first

To see reels in reverse chronological order from accounts you follow, click "Following" on the Reels feed. On tablets, to see reels in reverse chronological order from accounts you follow, click “For You” on the Reels feed and then click “Latest” in the drop down list of options. Learn more.

Report

If you see someone's reel and think it goes against Instagram's Community Guidelines, you can report it.

Remix

The remix feature lets you use an existing reel to create your own content.

Save

You can save a reel to your own collection.

Not interested

If you don’t want to see more of a certain type of reel, you can select “Not interested” in the three-dot overflow menu and the system will attempt to filter out similar content in the future.

You can share a reel by sending it to someone via Instagram Stories or direct message, text or other apps.

Change sensitive content

You can also choose to see more or less content that could be upsetting or offensive using the sensitive content options.

How the AI delivers content to you

We want you to see content you enjoy and find interesting. To achieve this, the AI system has models that help it make predictions about content you'll find most relevant and valuable. These prediction models use underlying input signals to help select content you're most likely to engage with.

Below are some of the significant predictions-and input signals that inform them-that we use in this AI system.

How likely you are to use the audio from a reel you're viewing in one you create