So sick of AI generated fake videos on social media etc

[MistressoftheDarkSide]

Frankly, I don't think AIBU at all, but feel free to contradict if you think i am.

I only use Facebook to keep up with friends and acquaintances, and sometimes to watch crafting videos.

It's bad enough all the fake animal rescue / animals saving children AI slop videos, and the "art" and "music" generated entirely by algorithms. I cross reference anything that looks dodgy.

But today I came across a video that seems to show people in an official looking US legal setting, showing people, average looking citizens, all down on the floor restrained with purportedly armed ICE agents standing over them. The caption was something to do with filibustering and the shut down.

I've done a quick poke around the Internet and obviously there's no other evidence that this is anything other than fake.

I just don't get it. Well, I'm not that naive, I do. I'm just sick of it, sick of not being able to trust anything much I see because the faking is getting so scarily good.

Sorry, I just needed a rant.

I agree with you OP. I watched a video on youtube about tips to spot AI videos:

1. Videos are less than 10 seconds
2. Mistakes in the background
3. AI is better at hands now so check teeth
4. People having a conversation but their face/body isn't aligned to the person they are talking to like people would naturally
5. Fast cuts to scenes that don't follow on from one another
6. Illegible writing on things

I know exactly which video you mean and it has been around for many years (pre-AI), so I think it is definitely real!

@Lovesabadboy but I was meeting with AI developers in 2016. (I don't have any understanding of AI, I was part of a very long chain of generally pointless workers)

I don't think it was that good in 2016 though, but I just had that very sad thought that it might not be real.

A huge amount of the accounts commenting wishing the fake old lady happy birthday are also bot accounts.

It’s AI commenting on AI. No one involved is real.

Most fakes that I have seen have been embarrassingly bad. There was what purported to be film of a bridge collapsing, which showed a number of cars apparently still driving happily through thin air. And another where a massive wave appeared to break over a quayside with several people on it, none of whom made the slightest attempt to get away and were still standing, clearly bone dry, when the wave receded. They can get quite funny when they're as bad as that.

And an old couple apparently standing in the same place 50+ years later or something bs like that
FB is nearly all ads, fake stuff and AI videos you have to scroll for ages to see any actual real people that you know

I also dislike that if I google something the first answers that come up are AI, and its not always true

"What I don't get is that generative ai scrapes websites for the data it uses to generate. But now people use generative ai instead of looking at a website.
So presumably ai will just eat itself"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r0erqk18jo

This describes it quite well. The human centipede- shitting out the scrapings, eating them and shitting them out again over and over.

I hate it too. I hate the obvious fakes that are just an insult to the intelligence, but I hate that I've probably been taken in by more realistic looking things plenty of times. Nobody likes being taken for a fool. I hate feeling that I should be on high alert for fakery when I just want to be able to relax and trust the world sometimes- after all, most people are reasonably honest most of the time, most real people have some sort of moral code, but AI does not. Like a lot of you have said, I hate that this is making me suspicious too. My friend sent me a video of a Polish guy skiing off Everest without oxygen. It looks real, and as far as I can tell from cross checking it is real, one of those Red Bull things. But like a PP said, I just want to be simply awed by things, not think "oh wow, that's amazing...hang on, is this just more bullshittery?...." every time

Fair enough, I didn't express myself very well on this subject, however I do say in that quote that such editing "no AI needed" is part of the problem. I'm beyond frustrated with every aspect of what is being churned out as "content" no matter the source, and the way it makes it nigh on impossible to get a grasp on reality.

It irks me that Trump is in a position to sue for a billion, when news organisations are supposed to go through everything with a fine tooth legal comb to make sure that doesn't happen. Then again, "churnalism" has been guilty of misrepresenting things for time immemorial, and it seems to be contingent on having power and money to achieve real redress, normally it's a tiny apology buried amongst the newsagent.

But isn't this just an absolute example of the "Idiocracy" endemic in our time?

I spend alot of my time going "eh?" When I dip into current affairs, to the point where I'm seriously concerned that I might be going down the cognitive impairment route, because nothing, but nothing, makes sense to me any more, and while I'm in my late 50s I'm hardly in the "rose tinted glasses nostalgia" cohort due to some personal experiences that gave me a rude awakening about how the world can work.

I'm with the PP who mentioned going the Amish route. Very appealing if we can keep "God" out of it.

😧😧Nooooooooooo!!

I still think that most AI videos are pretty rubbish these days (getting better all the time, but there are still tell-tale signs and a 'smoothness' to them IMO), so I prefer to think that back then they would not have been so good/believable.

I have just found the original video on You Tube dated 9 years ago, so I honestly don't think AI was at a very high standard back then.

That video will never not make me laugh!

it’s scary how fast it seems to be moving, will it eventually get to a point where there are no tell-tale signs?

I always used to think how cool it is that future generations will have so much photo and video material of history, but that this rate they probably won’t know what’s real or not 🙄

Exactly. The BBC has allowed dishonest employees to destroy its unique reputation for honesty and impartiality. That's what really disgusts me.

I think it will be the end of social media. What's the point in following a creator if they're not real, or you don't know if the content is real.

Even on here I'm increasingly not bothering with posts because I suspect they're AI-generated.

That’s another level of black mirror I hadn’t thought of

It’s my birthday I’m 89 and I hand crafted this chair. No one has said happy birthday to me.

It's absolutely happening. If you go on Twitter it's just right-wing bots winding up other right-wing bots, with the odd real person caught in the middle and believing these are all fervent racists and this is how reality is now, and London is fallen 🙄

It's pointless as a social media platform because Musk allowed the bots to completely take over. Facebook is now going the same way, but more with AI videos to confuse the boomers (and I include my family boomers in that).

I hate it. I also hate how Google has changed with the (often inaccurate) AI summary coming up first - is there a way of turning that off? I find it scary and worry how it will affect jobs in the future, already we receive so many emails at work clearly written by AI.

And now we can't even trust what's broadcast on the BBC news!

All of them including GB News Reform propaganda

On the plus side, we will all get that time scrolling back if no one uses social media. I am hopeful we might start actually talking to each other again and making more of an effort to see people face to face, maybe the high streets will make a comeback?

Isn't that Dead Internet Theory? Another thing that's been going on for a while.

Or possibly another thing that got me labelled to conspiracy theorist when I first said it.

I remember trying to explain to someone why AI would not actually get smarter and smarter, that it would be mostly the garbage in, garbage out model, and he thought I was joking.

Yes, I think if you type your query and put "-AI" at the end, you'll get better results

I suspect they will remove that option, though.

I've noticed that. Bless them.

I understand why my nanna used to get me to program the video every week as a kid, despite keeping repeatedly showing her. I get it.

I just get the AI of morbidly obese people falling through floors usually. Every one I hide, 3 more pop up.

Anyone who wants to see the dead internet in action just needs to go on Twitter and look at a funny video posted by a bot.

Underneath there will be hundreds of comments but they will just be bot accounts tweeting random other videos nothing to do with the original, or fake accounts tweeting anodyne comments like ‘cats and dogs are best friends’, or porn bot accounts saying ‘I get hot watching this’. And sometimes different accounts tweeting exactly the same comment.

And because Twitter is monetised the original bot account will be making money based on the engagement with their tweet, even if that engagement is all bots.

Twitter really is the pits isn’t it

Anyone remember when we use to say “a photo never lies”? I miss those days.