AI Video Is Improving: Hello, Hollywood!
December 30, 2024
Has AI video gotten scarily believable? Well, yes. For anyone who has not gotten the memo, The Guardian declares, “Video Is AI’s New Frontier—and It Is so Persuasive, We Should All Be Worried.” Writer Victoria Turk describes recent developments:
“Video is AI’s new frontier, with OpenAI finally rolling out Sora in the US after first teasing it in February, and Meta announcing its own text-to-video tool, Movie Gen, in October. Google made its Veo video generator available to some customers this month. Are we ready for a world in which it is impossible to discern which of the moving images we see are real?”
Ready or not, here it is. No amount of hand-wringing will change that. Turk mentions ways bad actors abuse the technology: Scammers who impersonate victims’ loved ones to extort money. Deepfakes created to further political agendas. Fake sexual images and videos featuring real people. She also cites safeguards like watermarks and content restrictions as evidence AI firms understand the potential for abuse.
But the author’s main point seems to be more philosophical. It was prompted by convincing fake footage of a tree frog, documentary style. She writes:
“Yet despite the technological feat, as I watched the tree frog I felt less amazed than sad. It certainly looked the part, but we all knew that what we were seeing wasn’t real. The tree frog, the branch it clung to, the rainforest it lived in: none of these things existed, and they never had. The scene, although visually impressive, was hollow.”
Turk also laments the existence of this Meta-made baby hippo, which she declares is “dead behind the eyes.” Is it though? Either way, these experiences led Turk to ponders a bleak future in which one can never know which imagery can be trusted. She concludes with this anecdote:
“I was recently scrolling through Instagram and shared a cute video of a bunny eating lettuce with my husband. It was a completely benign clip – but perhaps a little too adorable. Was it AI, he asked? I couldn’t tell. Even having to ask the question diminished the moment, and the cuteness of the video. In a world where anything can be fake, everything might be.”
That is true. An important point to remember when we see footage of a politician doing something horrible. Or if we get a distressed call from a family member begging for money. Or if we see a cute animal video but prefer to withhold the dopamine rush lest it turn out to be fake.
Cynthia Murrell, December 30, 2024
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