I think it all boils down to the definition of 'significant', as a viral case of an AI-generated meme (in the strict sense of text over an image) already happened a long time ago, more precisely in July 2022.

The "I'm bed" meme was shared in the DALL-E 2 subreddit, became viral, and was the subject of several references later. On the other hand, 5.4K likes can't be considered significant in today's terms, given AI's current popularity.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dalle2/comments/vpj50w/a_meme_from_2030_meme_of_the_year_trending/

@tsoru this definitely doesn't qualify, because its popularity is clearly based on the fact that it's AI generated

"the meme cannot simply be the fact that the content itself is AI generated" -- this disqualifies the example you linked

@Dulaman I get that, but I'd argue that any supposedly significant AI-generated meme will get popular especially because it's AI-generated.

Mecha-Hitler doesn't count as it's text-only, but would it have become that popular if a human came up with it?

The only scenario where this wouldn't happen is if the meme is declared as being AI-generated after becoming popular, but I think it's very unlikely as it needs some kind of follow-up by the anonymous prompter.

@tsoru I think the person who wrote this question thought this through carefully, given how the description is written. We're currently in the phase where we're seeing lots of AI generated memes that are impressive to our eyes knowing that they are AI generated, but would not have the quality to stand alone and compete with other memes without knowledge of that fact.

There's going to be a new regime at some point in the next few years where AI starts generating memes that genuinely compete with or surpass the best human-generated memes. And then yes we'll get those instances where people learn that it was AI generated after seeing it and upvoting it etc. For this question's resolution there's many ways that could happen to provide strong evidence. We'll know that an example qualifies when it takes place, whatever that ends up looking like. That's just not happened yet, and might not happen for another year or so.

@tsoru the most obvious one seems like a twitch streamer or something using an AI MemeGenerator and then there's strong evidence that they just clicked on a button and the AI did the whole thing A->Z and the resulting meme appears on stream and spreads from there. And the original video is the "strong evidence", but most people just see the meme on twitter/reddit/tiktok without knowing where it came from.

@tsoru my guess is that something like this will happen somewhere in 2027-2028

@tsoru Like we'll know it when we see it and it's going to be a real milestone. But right now we can't really wrap our heads around it and it's hard to think in terms of future AI capabilities. Like an AI that came up with a new meme format that really takes off virally to an extent similar to that of historical memes.

These meme formats were produced by human brains working their way through thousands upon thousands of different ideas and the top ranking ones are 1 in a million. Takes a fairly smart system and probably a lot of scale to invent/discover a new meme format of the same caliber. Current AI systems just don't appear to be smart enough to do this.

Like a meme that reaches the top of r/memes or something and people in the comments for the first 24h just don't seem aware that it was AI generated

No AI in 2025 can do that

@Dulaman

the resulting meme appears on stream and spreads from there

As a PhD in AI, I agree with what you said. The only thing I must say is, we can't take the fact that the meme is AI-generated away from the very reason it will spread. They're strongly connected, and this is why it will be hard to distinguish the two scenarios:

• meme is fair, but it gets popular mostly because most people know it's AI-generated

• meme is actually good, and the fact it's AI-generated doesn't really change the outcome because most people don't know that

@tsoru

As a PhD in AI, my interpretation of this question's criteria is that the first scenario doesn't qualify. There will be many candidates that are argued for the second scenario and and at some point one of them will be convincing enough for provide a consensus that it resolves this question positively. But yes, absolutely, I agree that there's going to be a collection of memes that emerge over the next couple of years or so that people will argue for in the comments section of these questions, that fall somewhere between the two scenarios you describe.

@Dulaman Fair enough. Btw, I didn't mean to boast. I just wanted to let you know that I also "thought this through carefully" and wasn't giving bar talk. This is my real name, so feel free to check on Scholar that I'm not a dog. ;)

@tsoru I'm actually a sentient jacket potato. You can call me Dr Potato

@Dulaman Funnily enough, 'Jacket Potatoes' was one of my first AI songs. The circle is complete.

I think this market is going to resolve NO

If it wasn’t for the “can’t be text” requirement would “mecha hitler” count? @RemNi

gpt-5-pro's take on this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_brainrot

https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1kwzcjd/thats_very_creative/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

How are we defining "significant" - I'm seeing a lot of image memes generated by chatgpt "in the wild" these days (being shared organically as memes, not labeled as AI output)

examples: https://old.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1jr3lm9/canwebanaisloppls/

@retr0id there are some author's comments here https://manifold.markets/RemNi/will-a-significant-ai-generated-mem-5f798d3b2ace.

Also doubt this passes this part:

The "idea" of the meme must have been discovered by an AI. If a human comes up with an idea for a meme, and then creates an image using a text-to-image model and puts it online, this does not count.