I just looked for ai slop on the internet and some videos are very realistic, so realistic it makes me doubt my ability to discern what’s real from what’s created to play with my emotions and generate money for the creator or advance an agenda.
I’m in my 40s. Video sites are full of what I assume overconfident people younger than me with comments like how boomers would believe any of these videos. I’m not that old myself yet but this stuff is scary. It can be used to denigrate a politician, to demonize or ridicule minorities, to share misinformation, to make porn using the face of somebody who rejected a disgruntled man…
It’s also very sad society actually wants this. It shows lots of people are actually very gullible and stupid.
A better question would be, how do I avoid being gullible with images and video so realistic? Because the more technology advances the worse it’s going to get.
Start with the assumption the video is fake. Do you trust the source? If the video is of something outrageous, did you notice something feels uncanny? Does the lighting, shot angle, and proportions make sense?
If the answer is not yes, no, yes then it’s probably AI
This is pretty much it. Everything is fake unless you can prove it’s not
Because even on the best drugs, my cat never says those things. He just refuses to cut the blue wire out of spite.
It’s getting harder and harder but some things still seem to work:
- emotional emphasis on the wrong syllables
- dissonance between facial expressions and vocal delivery
- AI writing giveaways (it’s not A it’s B etc.)
- dreamlike / “floaty” motion
- unrealistic “depth of field” (objects don’t blur properly with distance)
- unrealistic lighting / coloring / appears stylized despite the attempted hyperrealism
- object permanence problems / subtle drift in sizes and proportions over time
This video by Corridor Digital breaks it down pretty well for less tech-savvy people, but they have more videos that go in greater depth about spotting AI trickery.
