4 Thoughts about AI Media

I don't consume a lot of short form video anymore, but I do occasionally dip into some funny memes with my friends. This is exclusively done on Instagram Reels.

Lately I've noticed that most of the content I'm seeing is AI generated. Most of it has the Sora watermark, but I'm starting to see longer form content (1 minute+) that is stitched together with other tools.

Some thoughts:

1. Memes & Merch There's a new meme that references "Yakub" alongside an esoteric blend of gamer culture & conspiracy theories of the 2010s and 2020s. For example, "Yakub needs you to win this round or Agartha will be doomed." Admittedly, this is really funny to me. These videos are clearly hand crafted by someone with a deep knowledge of internet culture and humour.

Many of these meme videos also reference "Azerbaijan Technology" or "Azerbaijan Intelligence" alongside a "link in bio" that leads to an online store selling t-shirts. Interestingly, there seems to be dozens of different accounts of various sizes all posting different variations of these videos and not all of them have links to the merch store, but many of the videos also contain characters wearing the t-shirts. I wonder how much money they're making.

2. I can't tell if videos are real or not I figured this day was coming, but I didn't think it would happen so soon. I am no longer able to tell if media on the internet is real or not. You can sometimes tell when text is generated with ChatGPT, but that's a result of lazy prompting at this point. I don't go on Reddit anymore because I suspect over 50% of the website is bots. I have no way of knowing if that's true, but it certainly feels that way.

There might be some clever ways to tell if something is AI generated or not, but I can't really tell anymore.

3. I hope it just gets boring One distinct memory I have from childhood was using cheat codes to get infinite money in real-time strategy video games. I could then build massive armies or get end-game items without playing the game properly. It was fun for about 15 minutes but then I got bored.

Now that I can't tell if a video is AI or not, I suddenly get that same feeling of boredom. The curation might be entertaining, but I'm starting to feel apathy rather than entertainment.

I hope that this makes people bored of social media & the internet, but I guess we'll see.

4. Verified Videos I'm a bit concerned about propaganda. If a bad actor with a medium-sized number of resources wanted to create a swarm of AI generated content to sway an election instead of sell t-shirts, it seems entirely possible at this point.

I hope both iOS & Android come out with a verified video feature. "Guaranteed not to be AI generated" would be a good way to guard against this kind of attack. I have no idea if that's even remotely possible, but it seems important.