Fake YouTube Videos and AI-Generated Content

[Ken Anderson]

Like many of you, I have enjoyed watching YouTube podcasts over the past several years, and occasional content on other platforms. Most of us are, and have long been, aware that content creators lie a lot, and that much of what gets us to click on the video in the first place is clickbait, either wholly unsupported by the video's content or only partially supported. However, some have seemed more legitimate than others.

Recently, however, the content creators themselves are fake. Without using a calculator, I'll suggest that the majority of the podcasts that show up in your YouTube feed are AI-generated. While the content itself may or may not be factual, much of it is fake, and much of the material that might include factual content has simply been scraped from other Internet sources and presented by AI.

Some of the content is presented by a deepfake AI video that seemingly portrays an actual person, but the actual person had nothing to do with it, while others are just fake AI images loosely animated in a video that presents AI-generated crap.

Meanwhile, the actual content creators are having to compete with AI-generated videos, supported by subscriptions and likes from bots, as well as from people who aren't paying enough attention to realize it's all fake. Even the music is fake.

 

[Don Alaska]

I saw one history channel that complained about having to compete against AI-generated content. He said he and his group spent hours and days researching content, but the AI channel trumped him with often made-up content.

 

[Beth Gallagher]

It is annoying, particularly because so many people believe it is real. On the upside, we can do away with the woke Hollywood morons because we don't need them anymore.

 

[Don Alaska]

It is annoying, particularly because so many people believe it is real. On the upside, we can do away with the woke Hollywood morons because we don't need them anymore.

I think stunt people especially will be affected, although actors aren't really needed either, especially for the action movies where real acting isn't needed. I can usually tell when there is good acting happening, but there isn't much of that anymore anyway

 

[John Brunner]

I was concerned when digital imaging first appeared. How does one verify what's real and what's not when presented in court as evidence? Now with AI, facts are whatever the cleverest person chooses to create. Good luck presenting a defense when "the video clearly shows..."

There is a case of police using sloppy AI assistance to [mis]identify an innocent grandmother and have her held in jail for 6 months. Lots of malfeasance to the story. The cops used AI facial recognition software for a woman on grainy security camera tapes as she committed bank fraud in North Dakota. The AI software used flagged the innocent woman who lived in Tennessee and has never been to North Dakota. They had an arrest warrant issued and she sat in jail in Tennessee for 4 months before being extradited to North Dakota and being interviewed by police for the first time. Only then she was able to prove she had been in Tennessee when the crimes were committed...so they let her go and dumped her on the street in North Dakota to find her own way back home to Tennessee. She borrowed money from her lawyer to return home.

Story here

 

[April Vee]

Yup AI is ruining everything...

Websites being hit with extreme high traffic,etc.......

 

[John Wick]

As soon as I recognize AI generated or narrated videos I move on immediately. I guess that means I'm prejudiced

 

[Marie Mallory]

Mostly just use YT for music although we do like to watch a few real life shows,

 

[Yvonne Smith]

I think that AI has a place, and it is fine, as long as it is not being given to us as being actually real, which is what is happening in some of the videos we see nowadays.
I think that it is great for movies, where it can save people and animals from being hurt, and they can do effects that would be hard to do with live animals.
I loved the movie, “Life of Pi”, and you can’t really tell which is the live tiger and which is the AI tiger unless you are just focusing on that and not enjoying the movie.

Here is one of the classic movies , The Magnificent Seven”, made with AI, just for those of us who adore our kitty cats.

 

[Andie White]

LOL The cats riding dogs of course.
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The amount of AI on YouTube is starting to bother me, too. I was watching one yesterday about a politician and every few minutes the pictures were not of him, but of Dwight Yoakum. What the heck? I suppose it's a good thing when they are so sloppily made you are warned not to believe any of it.

 

[Bobby Cole]

Not to defend or discard ai, if one listens to a studio recorded piece of music, what used to be the actual voice and instrumentation on the tape, chances are that now the music has been modified by tech to make it more marketable. If a person sings flat or sharp, auto tune takes care of it and if the drummer didn’t show up or wasn’t in the budget, a computer driven drummer can be programmed in the mix and the same holds with any musical instrument.
In the music world, ai is just one more step in the ongoing process but unfortunately, can do it sans the 3 dimensional human(s) that used to actually sing and turns them into 1 or 2 dimensional script.

Now, as to content writing, if one is in such a position, like a teaching professor, editor or detective etc, who needs (or is curious enough) to find out if a piece is truly human generated, then the proper tools are a available to find such things out.
Just as there are programs that one can install to detect plagiarized content, there are programs available that will enable anyone to detect ai generated content.

To be truthful, some of the stuff is indeed trash but then again, some of it I really like.
In the end though, I can already imagine that some of the writers, actors, singers, rappers and such are already sweating. They know how much talent they really have and also know their “brand” may become obsolete because they also know that most of their talent is electronically modified.
Added to that, after listening to a lot of ai generated music, especially the new ai generated blues and gospel music lately, I’m all for giving credit to the code writers.
I don’t watch the award ceremonies but maybe a new division should be recognized for an award? Perhaps a gold replica of a Mac for the code writers of the #1 song or stunt of the year?

 

[Mary Stetler]

By now most of us are aware of the possibility of AI whether on youtube or by scammers.
I have followed Dr Berg for years noting few mistakes. Recently someone put 'him' on and it was called out angrily by viewers who knew him as fake. youtube Advice by Warren Buffet? Uh uh.
I cracked up at some of 'Elon Musk" who had a cow lick flapping in the light through the videos.
Back when I was writing I found that many books were just researched and reworded into new book versions. A bit more work than AI but not actually plagiarism.
Politics has been influenced by fake news all along here. The fakery may just get better.