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Generative AI is replacing writers, designers, actors, ... it is nothing like just a spell checker or Phtoshop. Everyday, I see ads on YouTube with smooth-talk

Generative AI is replacing writers, designers, actors, ... it is nothing like just a spell checker or Phtoshop. Everyday, I see ads on YouTube with smooth-talking, real-looking AI-generated actors. Each one represents one less person that would have been paid. There is no exact measure of correctness in design; one bad bit does not stop the show. The clients don't even want real art. Artists sometimes refer to commercial work as "selling out", referring to hanging their artistic integrity on the hook to make a living. Now "selling out" competes with AI which has no artistic integrity to hang on the hook, works 24 hours a day for peanuts and is astonishingly prolific.

biophysboy 1y ago
YouTube has the lowest quality ads of any online platform I use by several orders of magnitude. AI being used for belly fat and erectile dysfunction ads is not exactly good for its creative reputation
- matheusd 1y ago
  Local governments in BR have already made ads using generative AI that were shown during prime time TV hours[1]. You can argue that is a bad thing (local designers/content producers/actors/etc lost revenue, while the money was sent to $BigTech) or that this was a good thing (lower cost to make ad means taxpayer money saved, paying $BigTech has lower chance of corruption vs hiring local marketing firm - which is very common here). [1]https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/tecnologia/video-feito-com-inteligencia-artificial-gera-polemica-no-para-entenda/ https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/tecnologia/video-feito-com-inte...
  - biophysboy 1y ago
    I have no doubt there will be AI advertising. I bet it’s the primary untapped revenue stream. My argument is that it will be associated with cheap, untrustworthy products over time, even if it’s possible to spend more money and get better AI ads. Same thing as social/search ads.
frank_nitti 1y ago
I agree with your sentiment. But where I struggle is: to what degree do each of those ads “represent one less person who would have been paid” versus those that represent one additional person who would not be able to afford to advertise in that medium. Of course that line of reasoning reduces similar to other automation / minimum wage / etc discussions
- boesboes 1y ago
  It reminds me of the piracy lawsuits that claimed damages as if every download would have been a sale
  - kazinator 1y ago
    The extreme opposite idea that no unlicensed use of software is a lost sale is likewise a fantasy.
- Adverblessly 1y ago
  Obviously there's some mix of the two, but given then I've seen AI used (poorly) for both TV commercials (in expensive time slots) and billboards (I think expensive as well, but I don't really know) where you know they can afford to pay "real people" to do it, there's definitely a noticeable amount of real replacement.
whatever1 1y ago
“ Everyday, I see ads on YouTube with smooth-talking, real-looking AI-generated actors. Each one represents one less person that would have been paid.” The thing is that they would not have paid for the actor anyway. It’s that having an “actor” and special effects for your ads cost nothing, so why not? The quality of their ads went up, the money changing hands did not change.
mjr00 1y ago
> Everyday, I see ads on YouTube with smooth-talking, real-looking AI-generated actors. Each one represents one less person that would have been paid. Were AI-generated actors chosen over real actors, or was the alternative using some other low-cost method for an advertisement like just colorful words moving around on a screen? Or the ad not being made at all? The existence of ads using generative AI "actors" doesn't prove that an actor wasn't paid. This is the same logical fallacy as claiming that one pirated copy of software represents a lost sale.
- DrewADesign 1y ago
  A) J. Crew and others are using AI models instead of real models. Retail modeling was steady pay-the-bills work for models and actors and is actively being replaced by AI image generators— sometimes trained on images of a particular model they’re no longer paying. Writers and stock photographers are in much worse shape. B) Even in cases where AI actors are used where there wouldn’t have been actors before, the skillset is still devalued, and even that modest insulation for higher-end work is almost certainly temporary. Someone doing a worse version of what you do for 1% of your pay affects the market, and saving 99% is great incentive for companies to change their strategy until the worse version is good enough.
- semi-extrinsic 1y ago
  Yes, this. I recently used Midjourney to generate a super-convincing drone shot video for a presentation. The alternative would have been a stock photo. Probably took me the same amount of time to generate a pleasing video as I would have spent browsing Shutterstock. Only difference is my money goes to one corporation instead of the other. As far as the video is concerned, it adds a bit of a wow factor to get people interested, but ultimately it's the same old graphs and bullet points with words and numbers that matter. And those could just as well have been done on an overhead transparency in 1987.
- nine_k 1y ago
  It means that being a live actor is less of a differentiator. Of course great movie stars will remain, playing live, or animating computer characters, no matter. But simpler works like ads featuring a human now become more accessible. Among other things, this will remove most entry-level jobs, making senior-level actors more rare and expensive.
jvanderbot 1y ago
Anecdata: I know writers, editors, and white collar non-tech workers of all kinds who use AI daily and like it. When GPT3.5 first landed a lifelong writer/editor saw a steep decrease in jobs. A year later the jobs changed to "can you edit this AI generated text to sound human", and now they continue to work doing normal editing for human or human-ish writing while declining the slop-correction deluge because it is terrible work. I can't help but see the software analogy for this.
anthem2025 1y ago
And as people get more used to the patterns of AI it’s getting called out more and more.
burnte 1y ago
There's a difference between taking one thing and putting something else in it's spot, and truly REPLACING something. Yes, some ads have AI generated actors. You know because you can tell because they're "not quite right", rather than focusing on the message of the ad. Noticing AI in ads turns more people off than on, so AI ads are treated by a lot of people as an easy "avoid this company" signal. So those AI ads are in lieu of real actors, but not actually replacing them because people don't want to watch AI actors in an ad. The ad ceases to be effective. The "replacement" failed.
- zarzavat 1y ago
  Realistic video generation only became a thing in the last year or so. How long do you suppose it will be before we can't tell the difference between it and reality anymore? A few years at the most. Then what?
  - burnte 1y ago
    I don't think AI will ever be able to compete with real actors, not in a meaningful way.
    - kazinator 1y ago
      Animated films have competed for box office dollars since basically the dawn of cinema. Animated characters have fan followings. Just wait; the stuff is coming. Ultra-realistic full-length feature films with compelling AI characters that are not consistent from beginning to end, but appear in multiple features. The public will swallow it up.
      - burnte 1y ago
        Animation is drawn by humans, not AI. That's why it sells, it still has heart and emotion in it.
exe34 1y ago
> Each one represents one less person that would have been paid or equally, one more advert which (let's say rightly) wouldn't have been made. seriously though, automation allows us to do things that would not have been possible or affordable before. some of these are good things.
grugagag 1y ago
> Generative AI is replacing writers, designers, actors, ... it is nothing like just a spell checker or Phtoshop. For cheap stuff it’s true. However, nobody wants to watch or listen generated content and this will wear thin aside from the niche it’ll take hold of and permanently replace humans.

biophysboy 1y ago

YouTube has the lowest quality ads of any online platform I use by several orders of magnitude. AI being used for belly fat and erectile dysfunction ads is not exactly good for its creative reputation

matheusd 1y ago
Local governments in BR have already made ads using generative AI that were shown during prime time TV hours[1]. You can argue that is a bad thing (local designers/content producers/actors/etc lost revenue, while the money was sent to $BigTech) or that this was a good thing (lower cost to make ad means taxpayer money saved, paying $BigTech has lower chance of corruption vs hiring local marketing firm - which is very common here). [1]https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/tecnologia/video-feito-com-inteligencia-artificial-gera-polemica-no-para-entenda/ https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/tecnologia/video-feito-com-inte...
- biophysboy 1y ago
  I have no doubt there will be AI advertising. I bet it’s the primary untapped revenue stream. My argument is that it will be associated with cheap, untrustworthy products over time, even if it’s possible to spend more money and get better AI ads. Same thing as social/search ads.

frank_nitti 1y ago

I agree with your sentiment. But where I struggle is: to what degree do each of those ads “represent one less person who would have been paid” versus those that represent one additional person who would not be able to afford to advertise in that medium. Of course that line of reasoning reduces similar to other automation / minimum wage / etc discussions

boesboes 1y ago
It reminds me of the piracy lawsuits that claimed damages as if every download would have been a sale
- kazinator 1y ago
  The extreme opposite idea that no unlicensed use of software is a lost sale is likewise a fantasy.
Adverblessly 1y ago
Obviously there's some mix of the two, but given then I've seen AI used (poorly) for both TV commercials (in expensive time slots) and billboards (I think expensive as well, but I don't really know) where you know they can afford to pay "real people" to do it, there's definitely a noticeable amount of real replacement.

whatever1 1y ago

“ Everyday, I see ads on YouTube with smooth-talking, real-looking AI-generated actors. Each one represents one less person that would have been paid.” The thing is that they would not have paid for the actor anyway. It’s that having an “actor” and special effects for your ads cost nothing, so why not? The quality of their ads went up, the money changing hands did not change.

mjr00 1y ago

> Everyday, I see ads on YouTube with smooth-talking, real-looking AI-generated actors. Each one represents one less person that would have been paid. Were AI-generated actors chosen over real actors, or was the alternative using some other low-cost method for an advertisement like just colorful words moving around on a screen? Or the ad not being made at all? The existence of ads using generative AI "actors" doesn't prove that an actor wasn't paid. This is the same logical fallacy as claiming that one pirated copy of software represents a lost sale.

DrewADesign 1y ago
A) J. Crew and others are using AI models instead of real models. Retail modeling was steady pay-the-bills work for models and actors and is actively being replaced by AI image generators— sometimes trained on images of a particular model they’re no longer paying. Writers and stock photographers are in much worse shape. B) Even in cases where AI actors are used where there wouldn’t have been actors before, the skillset is still devalued, and even that modest insulation for higher-end work is almost certainly temporary. Someone doing a worse version of what you do for 1% of your pay affects the market, and saving 99% is great incentive for companies to change their strategy until the worse version is good enough.
semi-extrinsic 1y ago
Yes, this. I recently used Midjourney to generate a super-convincing drone shot video for a presentation. The alternative would have been a stock photo. Probably took me the same amount of time to generate a pleasing video as I would have spent browsing Shutterstock. Only difference is my money goes to one corporation instead of the other. As far as the video is concerned, it adds a bit of a wow factor to get people interested, but ultimately it's the same old graphs and bullet points with words and numbers that matter. And those could just as well have been done on an overhead transparency in 1987.
nine_k 1y ago
It means that being a live actor is less of a differentiator. Of course great movie stars will remain, playing live, or animating computer characters, no matter. But simpler works like ads featuring a human now become more accessible. Among other things, this will remove most entry-level jobs, making senior-level actors more rare and expensive.

jvanderbot 1y ago

Anecdata: I know writers, editors, and white collar non-tech workers of all kinds who use AI daily and like it. When GPT3.5 first landed a lifelong writer/editor saw a steep decrease in jobs. A year later the jobs changed to "can you edit this AI generated text to sound human", and now they continue to work doing normal editing for human or human-ish writing while declining the slop-correction deluge because it is terrible work. I can't help but see the software analogy for this.

anthem2025 1y ago

And as people get more used to the patterns of AI it’s getting called out more and more.

burnte 1y ago

There's a difference between taking one thing and putting something else in it's spot, and truly REPLACING something. Yes, some ads have AI generated actors. You know because you can tell because they're "not quite right", rather than focusing on the message of the ad. Noticing AI in ads turns more people off than on, so AI ads are treated by a lot of people as an easy "avoid this company" signal. So those AI ads are in lieu of real actors, but not actually replacing them because people don't want to watch AI actors in an ad. The ad ceases to be effective. The "replacement" failed.

zarzavat 1y ago
Realistic video generation only became a thing in the last year or so. How long do you suppose it will be before we can't tell the difference between it and reality anymore? A few years at the most. Then what?
- burnte 1y ago
  I don't think AI will ever be able to compete with real actors, not in a meaningful way.
  - kazinator 1y ago
    Animated films have competed for box office dollars since basically the dawn of cinema. Animated characters have fan followings. Just wait; the stuff is coming. Ultra-realistic full-length feature films with compelling AI characters that are not consistent from beginning to end, but appear in multiple features. The public will swallow it up.
    - burnte 1y ago
      Animation is drawn by humans, not AI. That's why it sells, it still has heart and emotion in it.

exe34 1y ago

> Each one represents one less person that would have been paid or equally, one more advert which (let's say rightly) wouldn't have been made. seriously though, automation allows us to do things that would not have been possible or affordable before. some of these are good things.

grugagag 1y ago

> Generative AI is replacing writers, designers, actors, ... it is nothing like just a spell checker or Phtoshop. For cheap stuff it’s true. However, nobody wants to watch or listen generated content and this will wear thin aside from the niche it’ll take hold of and permanently replace humans.