“Why Light Doesn’t Move | Leonard Susskind” - this video was recommended in my YouTube feed based on my interests and previous browsing history. This video had 162K views in just 12 days of being posted. What’s interesting is that a very similar “talk” was given by a different great scientist and a Nobel laureate in this video Why Light Doesn’t Move | Richard Feynman.
And here is the kicker, neither of the scientists ever gave this speech, these are not their words, these videos are AI generated using voice cloning. When I search “Why light doesn’t move” on Youtube, my search are results are dominated by AI slop. In fact, 8 of the top 10 search results were AI videos. The only genuine original content was The Speed of Light is NOT About Light (shout out to PBS Spacetime)
I’m not cherry picking, based on Kapwing’s research from last year, 21-33% of YouTube’s feed may consist of AI slop or brainrot videos. AI slop is leading to Enshittification of Youtube at an alarming pace. Most of the videos have less than 5K views and are generated in bulk using sophisticated AI workflows that generate the script, convert text to voice, do voice cloning, and video and thumbnail generation, all within minutes, once a good workflow is set up. Most of these mass produced videos are low-effort, soulless garbage, designed with clickbait titles to farm views. The comments on most of these videos are negative. People hate AI slop. But once in a while, one of these videos does go viral, which is why they exist. It’s quantity over quality. For these AI content creators, it’s a new kind of get-rich-quick scheme.
AI can be a tool to do great things. I have dabbled in voice cloning myself (blog post), but it was more of an attempt to showcase the effectiveness of a voice cloning model in a visual and creative way (plus a tutorial), and not a way to mislead the audience, or mass produce content. There are amazing ways that some people have used AI. The difference is that the creativity still comes from the human. AI for them is a tool to bring their ideas to life.
It’s not just Youtube though. Linkedin, for example, is a mess. All posts look the same, trading off originality in the service of pleasing the algorithm. Since all people cannot be writing the exact same way, there is no doubt that ChatGPT is involved in writing the posts “the LinkedIn way”.
The AI clutter on the internet is leading to some interesting trends. People are starving for real human generated content. Human creators are promoting their work by explicitly stating “No AI”.
Youtube has taken some measures to identify and flag AI generated content, but it’s lagging far behind the rate of AI slop generation. I am looking forward to Youtube algorithm changes to promote human content and even add explicitly filters and preferences to completely hide AI content in recommendations and search results. Fortunately, there are browser extensions and third party plugins that fill this gap. But it is very much an arms race between AI creation and detection.
When modern photography was invented, the artists gravitated towards non-photorealistic art styles like impressionism. Both could co-exist and found their purpose. I look forward to the internet riding out this AI storm, finding its proper use, and a revival of human generated content.