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All AI Videos Are Harmful (2025)

317 points by Brajeshwar 10mo ago

voidUpdate 10mo ago
And to make these harmful videos, they have ingested terabytes of uncredited video content and are causing a RAM shortage. What's the point?
- palmotea 10mo ago
  > What's the point? If AGI is achieved, some of the "they" at the cutting edge get to become feudal lords over massive AI empires that don't need you in them.
  - fao_ 10mo ago
    I'm not sure why this is downvoted because this is very literally the motivating reasoning, see: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement
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rkapsoro 10mo ago
There is one use case that is brilliant: comedy and meme videos. Bigfoot comes to mind.
- webdoodle 10mo ago
  I completely disagree. Meme's are a basic form of psyop, and are being using by intelligence agencies, the military, old media and new media, to warp our brains, and make us biological robots. Comedy is used much the same.
  - MarkusQ 10mo ago
    It wasn't always this way. Comedy has deep, deep roots as a channel for speaking truth to power. Only in recent decades does it seem we've discovered that you can flip the parity on both aspects and run it in reverse. Totally agree with your larger point, btw.
    - GuinansEyebrows 10mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)
  - observationist 10mo ago
    It's the other way around. Psyops are just memes. You should view everything communicated to you as a meme - a complex, semantically rich packet of information that implies the content and the intent arising from the agenda and context of the communicator. Everything from a simple wave hello by random passersby to pseudonymous manipulative poasting by nation state actors in service to secret purpose is a meme. Understand the actors or you will never be able understand the memes. AI is, for now, a tool. It's a powerful tool, a potent force multiplier, but there is no agency there. AI labs and governments and big tech companies have agendas and the ways in which they manipulate the output of AI tools is a meme modifier, so you should understand the ways in which different entities want to change the output of the tools you use, in order to correct for anything that deviates from your own intent and understanding. Psyops are just a particular configuration of meme scale within a culture; if your model of the world is correct and has reliable predictive power, you can correct for things that attempt to warp reality. Understanding how and why different entities warp their communications, whether it's intentional or endemic, is crucial to a reliable model.
Analemma_ 10mo ago
> AI-generated videos have developed their own unique look. There's a visual quality that marks them, a subtle wrongness that your brain picks up on even when you can't articulate exactly what's off. It's the new uncanny valley, and I feel an intense revulsion whenever I encounter it. Yesterday on the comment thread for the "Attention is Bayesian Inference" blog post (which definitely seems to have been written by AI), a couple people were asking "who cares who/what wrote it, if it has good information", and others were struggling to articulate a response. Well, for me this is the response: it has a specific tone, and every time I see it it activates my gag reflex and I back-button straight out of the page. I'm not interested in examining or deconstructing this response either, as far as I'm concerned it's evolutionarily adaptive and I intend to keep it.
- tejohnso 10mo ago
  That's only relevant until the AI output no longer has a tone that triggers your gag reflex. Then you'll be in the same boat as everyone else, and the "who cares who/what wrote it, if it has good information" question will apply to you as well.
  - Analemma_ 10mo ago
    What will actually happen if and when AI output is indistinguishable from human writing is that I will curate a whitelist of people I know personally whom I trust don't use it, only read from them, and everyone else can piss off. I've already stopped using several websites where the SNR has dropped too low because AI usage is rampant, I'd have no problem extending that to the entire internet.
    - stevenhuang 10mo ago
      Sure you will.
SunshineTheCat 10mo ago
One of the arguments I keep seeing from people churning out AI video is that the tech is enabling people "creative freedom" that's been made possible now even without the technical know how. However, 99% of the the "creativity" from what I've seen is done by the AI (how it should look, where the cuts need to happen, the tone, color grading, etc). Which is to say, it's taken from other people's (creative) work. While a big part of being able to create a good video has much to do with storytelling, the craft of shooting and editing a video is a big part of the creative process as well. AI video isn't "enabling people to be more creative," it is quite literally removing creativity from the process all together.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 10mo ago
  Now do hand drawn cartoons vs 3d rendered cartoons. Is Pixar Incredibles where a computer algorithm made decisions about exact colors worse than Disney Cinderella where it was hand-drawn animation?
  - throwawayffffas 10mo ago
    Having watched both. Yes the Incredibles are much much worse. Especially if we focus on the color palette. You could have not picked a worse example. But for example Moana is not worse than Cinderella. Arguably it's better. But the algorithmic choices around perspectives, reflections, etc. Were not really automated. In both cases a lot of people where involved in each scene, and I am confident, they went over every frame, checking the result was what they wanted.
    - soiltype 10mo ago
      Additionally, hand-coloring wasn't necessarily a more pure creative choice anyway. It was dictated by material conditions such as the availability of pigments, studio constraints, time pressures, etc.
  - pyth0 10mo ago
    This feels like an incredibly disingenuous comparison and I suspect you know that. But just to play along, real artists had to design the character models, real filmmakers had to decide which shots to capture, real editors had to put that together to make a cohesive story. Also they almost certainly went through color grading after having completed the rendering, so the colors are certainly selected by humans to produce a nice looking composition.
threethirtytwo 10mo ago
This isn’t a crisis. The author is describing a good thing. When the day comes that the author can fulfill his dream that will not be a good day. And AI videos will be even more dangerous then.
- i80and 10mo ago
  The author is right that AI video is being used to propagandize and rot minds at scale in a way sort of unthinkable a couple years ago. Short-form video content wasn't good for us beforehand, but any balance has been fully upturned. (I think that's all intrinsic to genAI in a way the author doesn't want to confront, but there is a crisis)
  - threethirtytwo 10mo ago
    Yeah but at least they are still (barely) discernible. Most young minds can still see the difference. Wait a year and this may change.
throwawayffffas 10mo ago
> There's no easy solution to this crisis. Put down the phone, close that youtube, tik tok or whatever tab. Don't try to explain to your relatives which video is AI and which is not, explain to them that everything on the internet is bullshit and trolling, AI or not it does not matter it's all bullshit to sell ads. Tell them they are better off watching TV, even Fox news.
- simmerup 10mo ago
  When mass voting patterns change because they’re being influenced by AI it will affect you
  - throwawayffffas 10mo ago
    Because these platforms did not massively affect voting patterns before AI generated videos were a thing?
    - simmerup 10mo ago
      Of course social media affected voting patterns AI is going to turbo charge that and allow fewer people (those with the wealth to buy the compute) to sway more opinions
      - throwawayffffas 10mo ago
        While I don't disagree with your point. My main point is that trying to educate people to spot AI videos is pointless, in a matter of months, years the output will be impossible to discern from real videos. The central problem is the platforms and the wild west around disinformation campaigns. The AI is just an accelerant and we were on fire already.
  - timacles 10mo ago
    Thats really why governments are "racing" and backstopping the AI effort, its the most powerful propaganda tool ever invented.
chrsw 10mo ago
AI generated videos are being used in more and more ads. To cut costs I’m sure. The result is that ads that were just annoying are now terrible and jarring. When I hear talk about AI risks I mostly hear things like runaway super intelligence doing whatever it wants and leaving humanity in the lurch. But what about more realistic concerns, like accelerating the race to the bottom by cheaply and poorly ripping off other people’s work and forcing everyone else to do the same just to keep up?
- waltbosz 10mo ago
  Last night, I deliberately paid attention to an ad because it had the disclaimer "images generated with AI". I was curious to see what the advertisers did with the technology. The ad featured a bunch of animals of different species driving cars around a city. It clearly had that AI uncanny valley that high budget 3D modeled CGI animals doesn't have. I thought about what it would have cost for a effects team to 3D model and render all those animals, and also wondered how many rendering attempts with the AI did it take to get good footage for the ad. The ad felt sickening to look at, like a TV with smooth motion turned on. It's like my brain is rejecting the pictures that it sees because it doesn't match the patterns of motion that it has been trained to recognize. Or was it just regular motion sickness.
- simianwords 10mo ago
  i don't get this "race to the bottom", "to cut costs".. like isn't that a good thing? your things will get cheaper if the cost required to market them reduces.
  - belinder 10mo ago
    Maybe in the past. In todays world, when something becomes cheaper, the extra revenue goes straight to the executives. The consumer doesn't see it
  - exhumet 10mo ago
    because the race to the bottom does not and will not benefit us, they will cut costs but whatever it is will still cost you the same or more.
badsectoracula 10mo ago
99% of everything is bad, so that unsurprisingly includes AI videos. But i've seen several good videos made using AI, including pretty much everything NeuralViz[0] on YouTube makes, but also some that have been posted in older comments here in HN. Igorrr's ADHD music video[1] was also made using AI and fit the music perfectly. The common aspect with these "good" uses though is that they do not let the AI do 99% of the job (as mentioned in another comment) but they still involve editing, writing/scripting, acting (NeuralViz for example uses his webcam to act both the motion and voice in his videos and uses AI to change them) and to some extent leaning into the "weirdness" that AI videos have instead of ignoring it. [0] https://www.youtube.com/@NeuralViz https://www.youtube.com/@NeuralViz (i high recommend watching them in upload order because they all build into the same "universe" and often make references to older videos) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGIvO4eh190 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGIvO4eh190
- SecretDreams 10mo ago
  > 99% of everything is bad, so that unsurprisingly includes AI videos. You're probably not wrong, although there's probably also a spread in % between mediums of creation that is worth exploring since a couple % difference could compound. Even ignoring the above, the issue is WRT rates of creation. I'm no good at drawing. For me to make a bad drawing might take some time. I'll need sleep. And food. I can only make so many bad drawings a day. AI can just work nonstop to make slop. The main strength, if you'd call it that, of automation (AI in this case), is the ability to quickly crank out crap. It is flooding the internet with crap at accelerating rates. The internet/humanity doesn't have enough tools today to deal with the flood of garbage. If AI could make physical crap, we'd quickly end up like that garbage episode of Futurama.
  - GuB-42 10mo ago
    Actually we have a way to filter out that crap, that's what Google, Meta, TikTok, etc... have perfected over decades. The internet is huge and full of crap, and we get to see very little of it. Suggestions from, say, YouTube are generally high quality, few AI slop, vacation videos from random people, or penises. I don't mean good as in moral values, but I mean a production value beyond what you can do by writing a few lines in an AI prompt: decent picture and sound, a well written script, etc... As more and more AI slop floods the internet, people will start to notice more and more and downvote it down to oblivion and really good content will surface. It may or may not be made with the help of AI, but it won't be sloppy. We are already seeing that, active communities don't have much AI slop, dead communities have plenty, kind if like these abandoned forums that are full of spam no one reads. People are getting tired of AI slop, it is becoming as recognizable as a photoedit made in 5 minutes in MS-Paint, and it has about the same value. Good for over the top memes where being ugly is part of the charm, but not for anything serious.
simianwords 10mo ago
I have an idea for a movie. Its kind of an epic idea - more about the characters, story and the feeling. I want to get the idea across as close as possible to what is in my head. AI has given me the opportunity to do it. I just have to keep prompting to get the exact feeling and I can share my idea. I don't like these curmudgeonly takes.. I'm sure this "All AI Videos Are Harmful" take will age just like how "All videos are harmful" and "All cartoons are harmful" have aged.
- miltonlost 10mo ago
  Cool, but what about the rampant fraud portion of the article?
  - simianwords 10mo ago
    that's cool. every new technology can be used in both ways
- layer8 10mo ago
  > I want to get the idea across as close as possible to what is in my head. In my experience, AI is poorly suited for that, unless what you have in mind is just some remix of what already exists.
- andyfilms1 10mo ago
  While I appreciate your positive experience, if you were unable to write, storyboard, and communicate your idea before AI--than AI is not going to be "the thing" that suddenly turns you into a filmmaker. You're writing anyway, you just call it prompting. If you feel that the AI is giving you back more than what you're putting in with that writing, you have to ask yourself who's vision the result really is.
  - simianwords 10mo ago
    Would you say the same thing for cartoonists? Don’t call it film making, call it something else. You are just drawing. Your video camera is also giving you more than what you put in it.
deleted 10mo ago
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renewiltord 10mo ago
I can’t seem to figure out a good prompt for these yet. But there are people doing clever things (short clips with first frame previous last frame, instructions on the image of first frame, etc.) and I hope that over time these get to become as good as image models have.
deleted 10mo ago
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WackyFighter 10mo ago
His rationale ignores all the legitimate and harmless use cases for AI. I've seen people make with the help of AI comedy/meme/comedy music videos and put them up on YouTube. Making a hyperbolic statements stating that it is all harmful, because there are deceptive usages of AI is just asinine.
renegade-otter 10mo ago
Erase the barrier of entry for the unwashed masses, pardon my snob, and it will inevitably turn to shit. There has to be a middle ground between insurmountable obstacles and "whip your phone out, push button to generate, and send".
whywhywhywhy 10mo ago
If you couldn't have made the story into a short film before AI video then AI video isn't going to suddenly make you a talented film maker. Eventually one day you'll be able to put your vague story idea in and get a fully finished coherent well made movie out but currently if you lacked the talent before you're still lacking the talent today. We know this because actually existing talented film makers have done entertaining work with AI video. But it's silly to use it as justification to write it off just because you're not talented in the field.
- Gagarin1917 10mo ago
  It’s ridiculous to say everyone who has an idea for a film could have gotten it made already if they had the skill. There are endless amounts of people with real skill in the film industry that cannot get their movie made even though they have the connections and the experience. Famous filmmakers even experience this. Imagine the number of people who couldn’t break into the industry or simply don’t trust it? There are countless people around the world who have fully fleshed out ideas for films that producers won’t finance because literally billions of dollars are going to create ever more Marvel slop. You’re focusing on one type of person that may or may not have the skills. That’s just one specific scenario, there are many others to weight just as much. What about all those that do but can’t make it happen because of all the realities of life?
  - whywhywhywhy 10mo ago
    > could have gotten it made already > cannot get their movie made even though they have the connections I'm talking about film makers, as in directors who can either hold the camera themselves or instruct someone else where to point it from a budget they provide or source. You seem to be conflating having the talent to actually make a short film yourself with script writers getting a production green lit on someone elses dime. Almost all successful directors have done the former at the start of their career.
waffletower 10mo ago
I think the concern of the author, that AI video ultimately "enable(s) those who want to manipulate, deceive, and exploit people for engagement, profit, or ideology", cannot be understated. However, the binary claim that the author doubles down on throughout, "All AI Videos Are Harmful", dilutes this messaging.
adamwong246 10mo ago
"synthetic reality" is my new favorite term.
nathias 10mo ago
> indirectly harmful by training us to accept a synthetic reality where nothing can be trusted and everything must be questioned. that's quite the definition of 'harmful'
Alex2037 10mo ago
okay. and? tilt at this windmill all you like, but the genie is out of the bottle and there's nothing you can do about it but kvetch. you can't ban it, you can't regulate it, no more than the US government could rein in cryptography.
- YurgenJurgensen 10mo ago
  None of these companies are making money, so all we need to do is wait until the VC money runs out and it turns out there’s no market for any of this slop if the people creating it have to actually pay for it.
- unethical_ban 10mo ago
  Did cryptography or Toy story 3D animation make every human need to question the reality of any electronic audio or video they encounter, no matter how realistic? Did cryptography make me have to train my parents not to trust my own voice if I make strange asks like money? There is a lot more to do for each other as a society to adjust to the new normal of AI, than just complain. Awareness and realignment are critical.
  - Alex2037 10mo ago
    >cryptography cryptography enables spies, terrorists, criminals, and dissidents to communicate over any network with absolute impunity. if it was feasible, every government in the world would have banned or "regulated" it, as some had attempted to. but in the end, they had conceded defeat, and the world had not ended. >make every human need to question the reality of any electronic audio or video they encounter, no matter how realistic? you left out "images", which we learned to question decades ago. likewise, audio and video could also be manipulated with readily available, completely unregulated tools, to produce quite believable results.
    - unethical_ban 10mo ago
      I disagree with your final assertion. Completely or nearly-completely undetectable reproductions of reality, and specific human voices with intonation and generative vocabulary, have not been widely available before now to anyone with the will.
jajuuka 10mo ago
The author has a myopic view on Gen AI videos. They only focus on the most extreme examples and then hand wave cat videos as some crisis about reality. We had these exact same alarmists with previous technologies. Human's have an uncanny ability to adapt as their environment changes. Photoshop and 3D didn't destroy our brains and neither will this. Misinformation and the such have never needed AI to be effective. Those prey upon people's already existing biases and thoughts. The time where this becomes normal and these alarmists become the fringe crazies ranting about the end of civilization cannot come fast enough.
- empath75 10mo ago
  I think long term the primary use case for AI generated video is people creating AI generated video for themselves to watch as consumers, rather than passing off AI generated work as their own. I would not mind if I could go to ChatGPT and say: "Make me a 15 minute video about the history of gold mining in the Byzantine Empire", and it makes a mediocre soulless video I can half pay attention to while working. If I see a 15 minute video on youtube about it and I find out after starting to watch it that it was AI generated, it sends me into a blind rage that makes me want to delete the internet, though. Don't give me AI content unless I explicitly ask for it!
  - jajuuka 10mo ago
    I agree that it feels like a bait and switch on YouTube. I expect to see user made videos there. Regardless of how much effort was put into it. I think a policy where these AI videos could be flagged as such would help a ton. Would not be an easy task though for sure.
umvi 10mo ago
> manipulating vulnerable viewers it always rubs me the wrong way when people infantilize the masses. The "vulnerable" masses already already partake in lots of harmful substances and practices (tobacco, alcohol, drugs, gambling/lotto), AI videos are just another potential pitfall people will need to learn to be wary of.
- unethical_ban 10mo ago
  I think "learning that absolutely nothing you see with your own eyes can be trusted as reality despite looking completely real" is a valid problem and that we are all somewhat vulnerable there.
tracker1 10mo ago
Not sure how much of this is AI vs other techniques, though it's definitely AI as part of the toolset. But I think the result speaks for itself, it's absolutely impressive the work that has come out. I can only say, that the work that went into this video is definitely real, and I'm happy to see more of this, as opposed to "AI Slop" that we're mostly seeing so far. https://youtu.be/SGJC4Hnz3m0?si=J_8gsXEx4-cL3Mc9 https://youtu.be/SGJC4Hnz3m0?si=J_8gsXEx4-cL3Mc9
- miltonlost 10mo ago
  I wonder how Mark Hammill likes that they reused his likeness without permission. Seems emblematic of the larger problems with AI stealing whatever. Very ghoulish..
  - tracker1 10mo ago
    No idea... since Disney/Lucas already did this in Mandalorean, I'm sure he's open to the idea of it. In the specific instance, a non-commercial fan film, who knows. The fact that Disney/Lucas and others have already done so with dead actors, I'm not sure that fan films are any worse.
superkuh 10mo ago
This headline does not match the article at all. It claims all AI videos are harmful then immeidately goes on to throw this claim out and say old confused people might be fooled by the videos. This is a very narrow subset of AI videos. It's not just a pedantic issue. Making these kinds of extremely bold and all covering claims is par for the course for those who want to find and exploit attention from others for profit. If that's not what the author is doing I think the most charitable interpretation I can come up with is that they just have no experience with AI videos and are going off sensational press stories. They should buy an nvidia 3060 12GB ($200~ second hand) and try out wan2.2 on their home computer. It's really fun to be able to make these kind of videos on a whim. And they'll get some real lived experience with the subject.
its-summertime 10mo ago
> Or it's indirectly harmful by training us to accept a synthetic reality where nothing can be trusted and everything must be questioned. Good. Its beneficial, I'd think. Lies are not new, the amount of lies, probably not new either. I don't think we have (yet) reached a level of badness compared to the prior point of tobacco companies telling people around the world that cigarettes have medical benefits.
kcatskcolbdi 10mo ago
> Or it's indirectly harmful by training us to accept a synthetic reality where nothing can be trusted and everything must be questioned. I do find myself questioning the premise that accepting a 'synthetic reality where nothing can be trusted' is automatically bad. I've long felt that everyone took what they saw on the internet at face value when they should not. I do hope that injecting enough chaos into the system can force people to question their intake more consistently.
magic_hamster 10mo ago
(Please forgive the typos - I'm on my phone and didn't want to put this comment through AI...) This feels like a very strongly opinionated anti-AI echo chamber; while I absolutely recognize the destructive potential of AI video, I think the author is far off to the extreme end of completely ignoring every useful use case, and also, being somewhat naive. For example, trying to explain to people in your group chat why an AI video is fake, when they are not attentive to this message or never showed any sign they might care, and then being disappointed when nobody listens. Imagine crashing into a party and explaining to everybody why the music sucks and the food is bad; you might be right, but did you consider they just want to have a good time, and they just don't care? Since I've been to this rabbit hole myself, as I assume have many other readers with elderly parents, let me share my own experience. I've taken the time to show the older people in my family how AI works and how easy it is to create anything fake - including using their own appearance and voice! - and in the end of the day, they don't care. When forwarding a fake video, they say they know it's fake, but they still agree with the message, or liked the cute animals, so they forwarded it. This is old people for you. Now, I feel that during the post, the author has progressed from stating their own opinion on AI videos, to subtly claiming everybody hates AI videos and feel a physical sickness when seeing one, to the point that YouTube is scaring off viewers. This - while at the same time detailing how some people forward these videos like crazy. So which one is it? Well, I for one don't hate AI video as much as I hate bad, sloppy videos, but to be honest these have been around for a long time, there's a massive surge of misinformation and just aweful - and completely organic - videos out there. AI videos do open the door for very creative and awesome creations, and I've seen plenty of those, and enjoyed them quite a bit. This is just another tool. It's all up to you how you use it and what you create. Blaming the tool is just not going to work, just like blaming an instrument for the music being bad. The blame is with the composition, not the instrument. There will be a time, very soon, where you will not be able to tell it's AI. In fact, this time is now, and I assure you that some AI content in the right hands is just not distinguishable from the real thing anymore. You may have even seen, or - God help us - even enjoyed an AI generated video, without realizing it, and this will happen more often as these tools mature. This is just my 2 cents. I hope you will be able to finish you AI movie one day.
nomoreusernames 10mo ago
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epolanski 10mo ago
I have a huge beef with AI on YouTube. It's clear that plenty are doing the following: - find a random topic tied to their channel, e.g. some battle in Napoleonic wars - have Perplexity do as much research on the topic - have AI write a script for 20 minutes of it based on research - genAI images and video content - genAI the voiceover - profit I hate it. It's not even terrible content, nor it's not informative, but it's soulless and not very entertaining. Worst thing is that you're not told it's AI generated so you looking at pictures of the battle thinking they come from real paintings or something, so you maybe want to research more about that painting and it's all fake and not ai labeled. TikTok has it even worse. I think I've seen the "mother protects child from avalanche on a porch" variation in any goddamn way, with wolves, bears, people, deer, snow tigers..nothing is ai labeled and it all pretends to be genuine. Most videos about funny pets, which I loved, are also super fake. Labrador saves small child from falling tv, British shorthair chasing mastiff...all of this fake.. None of it labeled. It's slop after slop.
- wang_li 10mo ago
  AI content should be required by law to be flagged and described how the AI was used. It's bullshit when a channel pops up with a known person sitting facing the camera speaking for 20 minutes and it turns out to be entirely AI generated. The person in question not involved, the textual/spoken content is not their work, etc.
- empath75 10mo ago
  I have been blocking and reporting 90% of the "new" youtube channels that get recommended to me by the algorithm. Kids youtube is also an absolute wasteland of garbage AI generated crap now. Weirdly, I actually enjoy flipping through Sora every once in a while. Where it is upfront about being AI and a lot of it is quite entertaining. I would not mind if youtube added an "AI" section where you can generate your own videos or watch AI generated videos, but they need to start banning people that post AI generated videos in normal youtube channels.
dogprez 10mo ago
I'm not trying to detract from the OP's point but if the author turned the lens they are using to evaluate whether AI videos are harmful or not onto the videos one usually encountered on the internet pre-AI videos, I think they would find most internet videos are harmful by those same metrics. It's propaganda, rage-baiting, trying to manipulate you into buying something, etc. It's no wonder that's the sort of content we see being generated.
s1mon 10mo ago
All? Yes, there's a lot of garbage and outright dangerous, malicious stuff out there, but there's also moving art. It may take a while to drown out the stupid and evil stuff, but there are examples that amaze me: https://www.youtube.com/@kellyeld2323/videos https://www.youtube.com/@kellyeld2323/videos https://www.youtube.com/@alffx123/videos https://www.youtube.com/@alffx123/videos
- camillomiller 10mo ago
  Artistically not relevant enough to justify the downsides
  - Gagarin1917 10mo ago
    There’s no “justifying” anything - the tech is here. Even if you ban it globally, it would actually stop be here and would still be able to cause harm - it would just not be able to be used for good either.
    - waisbrot 10mo ago
      The technology is currently being heavily subsidized and made widely available. If we decided to ban it globally things would look very different. Would it be worthwhile for scammers to run a massive server farm and spend thousands on training and generation? Maybe? It would certainly reduce the quantity.
      - Gagarin1917 10mo ago
        If you think the tech only exists via mega corporations apps, then you’re very misinformed. You can generate videos locally. The models anlready exist.
    - camillomiller 10mo ago
      The mirror climbing tech chaps are doing to justify the technology per se is the most baffling I’ve seen years of following in tech. It exists therefore it has to be out there. Imagine if we applied that to industrial chemicals, pharmaceutical products, or literally any other industrial endeavor. It’s particularly pathetic to watch the absolutely non-existent level of self reflection.
okokwhatever 10mo ago
Reading your messages, I've come to the personal conclusion that we live in an age of misunderstanding. We're incapable of reaching any useful, consensual agreements. This holds us back, halting progress that could be truly positive for humanity, because having a society that's moving in opposite directions keeps us stagnant. This has been going on for far too many years. Let AI users use it. And let's train those who are defenseless against this advancement so they can decide for themselves.
erelong 10mo ago
"All AI Videos are Harmful" Obviously an incorrect statement? I will grant that most AI-generated videos I've experienced seem like novelties... although they've generated plenty of "valuable" humor. Certainly not universal harm! Give it time for the tool to be improved and for people to make better use of it?
oytis 10mo ago
> Even the "harmless" AI videos contribute to a broader erosion of trust in visual media. Frankly, the sooner we lose this trust the better. It's better to adjust our expectations than to stay vulnerable to manipulations
nisegami 10mo ago
That Trump "Made in America" AI video making rounds last night was hilarious though.
deleted 10mo ago
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senfiaj 10mo ago
Some AI videos are harder and harder to distinguish from real ones. This terrifies me, since it's not that obvious AI fake that some average grandmother would fall for. In short videos, it is more difficult to distinguish AI fakes from real ones, because there is less time for some error or inconsistency to appear.
stickfigure 10mo ago
Nearly everyone on this website can quote "MongoDB is web scale" from memory. That was an AI-generated video (for a very primitive definition of AI). I think we're all pretty ok with the concept.
dfacto 10mo ago
I didn't have time to read all the comments but here is Claude's summary for those interested: ``` 1. "Good AI work exists when humans stay involved" Quality AI videos exist but require human editing, scripting, acting - not letting AI do 99% of the work. Examples: NeuralViz, Igorrr's music videos. 2. "AI removes creativity, doesn't enable it" AI handles creative decisions (color grading, cuts, tone) that were previously human craft. This strips creativity from the process rather than democratizing it. 3. "Execution is the creativity" Ideas are worthless - execution is what matters. AI removes the execution process, which is where real creative work happens. "Using AI is like using an aimbot for music." 4. "AI enables creative expression for those locked out" Counter-position: High-concept filmmaking was previously only for the privileged. AI lets people with vision but without technical skills/money/connections realize their ideas. 5. "Race to the bottom / slop flood" AI's main "strength" is cranking out content at scale, flooding platforms with low-quality material faster than humans can filter. The internet is being overrun with unlabeled AI garbage. 6. "Trust erosion is the real harm" Even "harmless" AI videos contribute to a world where nothing visual can be trusted. This affects everyone regardless of whether they consume AI content directly. 7. "Theft at scale" Models exist only because of mass ingestion of creative work without consent. Using AI tools participates in this regardless of output quality. 8. "Platforms will adapt / people will learn" Optimistic view: Recommendation algorithms will filter slop, people will recognize AI aesthetic as they did MS Paint edits, and good content will surface. ``` Personal take: all these points are true/valid/correct/accurate. Controversial take: regardless, cat's outta the bag now and there's little we can do to stop it.
- evrenesat 10mo ago
  My personal take: All AI comments are harmful, including summaries. Now I have to update my hn comment summarizer prompt to ignore comments like this.
didntknowyou 10mo ago
my favourite AI videos are the obviously fake ones like cats working menial jobs. everything else can go.
veunes 10mo ago
The author nailed the problem but missed the technical root cause: lack of controllability. Current models (Sora, Veo, Runway) are probabilistic generators. They are optimized to output a plausible image, not the specific image a director needs. Spammers and scammers don't care about specifics, they just need a "talking head" or a "burning city." An artist however needs a specific angle, specific lighting, and character consistency. Until we solve the problem of reliable latent space control (something like ControlNet, but for video and on steroids), AI video will remain a tool for generating digital noise, not cinema
jamesfisher 10mo ago
Does this really need a (2025) clarification? That was 6 days ago

317 points by Brajeshwar 10mo ago

And to make these harmful videos, they have ingested terabytes of uncredited video content and are causing a RAM shortage. What's the point?

palmotea 10mo ago
> What's the point? If AGI is achieved, some of the "they" at the cutting edge get to become feudal lords over massive AI empires that don't need you in them.
- fao_ 10mo ago
  I'm not sure why this is downvoted because this is very literally the motivating reasoning, see: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement
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rkapsoro 10mo ago

There is one use case that is brilliant: comedy and meme videos. Bigfoot comes to mind.

webdoodle 10mo ago
I completely disagree. Meme's are a basic form of psyop, and are being using by intelligence agencies, the military, old media and new media, to warp our brains, and make us biological robots. Comedy is used much the same.
- MarkusQ 10mo ago
  It wasn't always this way. Comedy has deep, deep roots as a channel for speaking truth to power. Only in recent decades does it seem we've discovered that you can flip the parity on both aspects and run it in reverse. Totally agree with your larger point, btw.
  - GuinansEyebrows 10mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)
- observationist 10mo ago
  It's the other way around. Psyops are just memes. You should view everything communicated to you as a meme - a complex, semantically rich packet of information that implies the content and the intent arising from the agenda and context of the communicator. Everything from a simple wave hello by random passersby to pseudonymous manipulative poasting by nation state actors in service to secret purpose is a meme. Understand the actors or you will never be able understand the memes. AI is, for now, a tool. It's a powerful tool, a potent force multiplier, but there is no agency there. AI labs and governments and big tech companies have agendas and the ways in which they manipulate the output of AI tools is a meme modifier, so you should understand the ways in which different entities want to change the output of the tools you use, in order to correct for anything that deviates from your own intent and understanding. Psyops are just a particular configuration of meme scale within a culture; if your model of the world is correct and has reliable predictive power, you can correct for things that attempt to warp reality. Understanding how and why different entities warp their communications, whether it's intentional or endemic, is crucial to a reliable model.

Analemma_ 10mo ago

> AI-generated videos have developed their own unique look. There's a visual quality that marks them, a subtle wrongness that your brain picks up on even when you can't articulate exactly what's off. It's the new uncanny valley, and I feel an intense revulsion whenever I encounter it. Yesterday on the comment thread for the "Attention is Bayesian Inference" blog post (which definitely seems to have been written by AI), a couple people were asking "who cares who/what wrote it, if it has good information", and others were struggling to articulate a response. Well, for me this is the response: it has a specific tone, and every time I see it it activates my gag reflex and I back-button straight out of the page. I'm not interested in examining or deconstructing this response either, as far as I'm concerned it's evolutionarily adaptive and I intend to keep it.

tejohnso 10mo ago
That's only relevant until the AI output no longer has a tone that triggers your gag reflex. Then you'll be in the same boat as everyone else, and the "who cares who/what wrote it, if it has good information" question will apply to you as well.
- Analemma_ 10mo ago
  What will actually happen if and when AI output is indistinguishable from human writing is that I will curate a whitelist of people I know personally whom I trust don't use it, only read from them, and everyone else can piss off. I've already stopped using several websites where the SNR has dropped too low because AI usage is rampant, I'd have no problem extending that to the entire internet.
  - stevenhuang 10mo ago
    Sure you will.

SunshineTheCat 10mo ago

One of the arguments I keep seeing from people churning out AI video is that the tech is enabling people "creative freedom" that's been made possible now even without the technical know how. However, 99% of the the "creativity" from what I've seen is done by the AI (how it should look, where the cuts need to happen, the tone, color grading, etc). Which is to say, it's taken from other people's (creative) work. While a big part of being able to create a good video has much to do with storytelling, the craft of shooting and editing a video is a big part of the creative process as well. AI video isn't "enabling people to be more creative," it is quite literally removing creativity from the process all together.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 10mo ago
Now do hand drawn cartoons vs 3d rendered cartoons. Is Pixar Incredibles where a computer algorithm made decisions about exact colors worse than Disney Cinderella where it was hand-drawn animation?
- throwawayffffas 10mo ago
  Having watched both. Yes the Incredibles are much much worse. Especially if we focus on the color palette. You could have not picked a worse example. But for example Moana is not worse than Cinderella. Arguably it's better. But the algorithmic choices around perspectives, reflections, etc. Were not really automated. In both cases a lot of people where involved in each scene, and I am confident, they went over every frame, checking the result was what they wanted.
  - soiltype 10mo ago
    Additionally, hand-coloring wasn't necessarily a more pure creative choice anyway. It was dictated by material conditions such as the availability of pigments, studio constraints, time pressures, etc.
- pyth0 10mo ago
  This feels like an incredibly disingenuous comparison and I suspect you know that. But just to play along, real artists had to design the character models, real filmmakers had to decide which shots to capture, real editors had to put that together to make a cohesive story. Also they almost certainly went through color grading after having completed the rendering, so the colors are certainly selected by humans to produce a nice looking composition.

threethirtytwo 10mo ago

This isn’t a crisis. The author is describing a good thing. When the day comes that the author can fulfill his dream that will not be a good day. And AI videos will be even more dangerous then.

i80and 10mo ago
The author is right that AI video is being used to propagandize and rot minds at scale in a way sort of unthinkable a couple years ago. Short-form video content wasn't good for us beforehand, but any balance has been fully upturned. (I think that's all intrinsic to genAI in a way the author doesn't want to confront, but there is a crisis)
- threethirtytwo 10mo ago
  Yeah but at least they are still (barely) discernible. Most young minds can still see the difference. Wait a year and this may change.

throwawayffffas 10mo ago

> There's no easy solution to this crisis. Put down the phone, close that youtube, tik tok or whatever tab. Don't try to explain to your relatives which video is AI and which is not, explain to them that everything on the internet is bullshit and trolling, AI or not it does not matter it's all bullshit to sell ads. Tell them they are better off watching TV, even Fox news.

simmerup 10mo ago
When mass voting patterns change because they’re being influenced by AI it will affect you
- throwawayffffas 10mo ago
  Because these platforms did not massively affect voting patterns before AI generated videos were a thing?
  - simmerup 10mo ago
    Of course social media affected voting patterns AI is going to turbo charge that and allow fewer people (those with the wealth to buy the compute) to sway more opinions
    - throwawayffffas 10mo ago
      While I don't disagree with your point. My main point is that trying to educate people to spot AI videos is pointless, in a matter of months, years the output will be impossible to discern from real videos. The central problem is the platforms and the wild west around disinformation campaigns. The AI is just an accelerant and we were on fire already.
- timacles 10mo ago
  Thats really why governments are "racing" and backstopping the AI effort, its the most powerful propaganda tool ever invented.

chrsw 10mo ago

AI generated videos are being used in more and more ads. To cut costs I’m sure. The result is that ads that were just annoying are now terrible and jarring. When I hear talk about AI risks I mostly hear things like runaway super intelligence doing whatever it wants and leaving humanity in the lurch. But what about more realistic concerns, like accelerating the race to the bottom by cheaply and poorly ripping off other people’s work and forcing everyone else to do the same just to keep up?

waltbosz 10mo ago
Last night, I deliberately paid attention to an ad because it had the disclaimer "images generated with AI". I was curious to see what the advertisers did with the technology. The ad featured a bunch of animals of different species driving cars around a city. It clearly had that AI uncanny valley that high budget 3D modeled CGI animals doesn't have. I thought about what it would have cost for a effects team to 3D model and render all those animals, and also wondered how many rendering attempts with the AI did it take to get good footage for the ad. The ad felt sickening to look at, like a TV with smooth motion turned on. It's like my brain is rejecting the pictures that it sees because it doesn't match the patterns of motion that it has been trained to recognize. Or was it just regular motion sickness.
simianwords 10mo ago
i don't get this "race to the bottom", "to cut costs".. like isn't that a good thing? your things will get cheaper if the cost required to market them reduces.
- belinder 10mo ago
  Maybe in the past. In todays world, when something becomes cheaper, the extra revenue goes straight to the executives. The consumer doesn't see it
- exhumet 10mo ago
  because the race to the bottom does not and will not benefit us, they will cut costs but whatever it is will still cost you the same or more.

badsectoracula 10mo ago

99% of everything is bad, so that unsurprisingly includes AI videos. But i've seen several good videos made using AI, including pretty much everything NeuralViz[0] on YouTube makes, but also some that have been posted in older comments here in HN. Igorrr's ADHD music video[1] was also made using AI and fit the music perfectly. The common aspect with these "good" uses though is that they do not let the AI do 99% of the job (as mentioned in another comment) but they still involve editing, writing/scripting, acting (NeuralViz for example uses his webcam to act both the motion and voice in his videos and uses AI to change them) and to some extent leaning into the "weirdness" that AI videos have instead of ignoring it. [0] https://www.youtube.com/@NeuralViz https://www.youtube.com/@NeuralViz (i high recommend watching them in upload order because they all build into the same "universe" and often make references to older videos) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGIvO4eh190 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGIvO4eh190

SecretDreams 10mo ago
> 99% of everything is bad, so that unsurprisingly includes AI videos. You're probably not wrong, although there's probably also a spread in % between mediums of creation that is worth exploring since a couple % difference could compound. Even ignoring the above, the issue is WRT rates of creation. I'm no good at drawing. For me to make a bad drawing might take some time. I'll need sleep. And food. I can only make so many bad drawings a day. AI can just work nonstop to make slop. The main strength, if you'd call it that, of automation (AI in this case), is the ability to quickly crank out crap. It is flooding the internet with crap at accelerating rates. The internet/humanity doesn't have enough tools today to deal with the flood of garbage. If AI could make physical crap, we'd quickly end up like that garbage episode of Futurama.
- GuB-42 10mo ago
  Actually we have a way to filter out that crap, that's what Google, Meta, TikTok, etc... have perfected over decades. The internet is huge and full of crap, and we get to see very little of it. Suggestions from, say, YouTube are generally high quality, few AI slop, vacation videos from random people, or penises. I don't mean good as in moral values, but I mean a production value beyond what you can do by writing a few lines in an AI prompt: decent picture and sound, a well written script, etc... As more and more AI slop floods the internet, people will start to notice more and more and downvote it down to oblivion and really good content will surface. It may or may not be made with the help of AI, but it won't be sloppy. We are already seeing that, active communities don't have much AI slop, dead communities have plenty, kind if like these abandoned forums that are full of spam no one reads. People are getting tired of AI slop, it is becoming as recognizable as a photoedit made in 5 minutes in MS-Paint, and it has about the same value. Good for over the top memes where being ugly is part of the charm, but not for anything serious.

simianwords 10mo ago

I have an idea for a movie. Its kind of an epic idea - more about the characters, story and the feeling. I want to get the idea across as close as possible to what is in my head. AI has given me the opportunity to do it. I just have to keep prompting to get the exact feeling and I can share my idea. I don't like these curmudgeonly takes.. I'm sure this "All AI Videos Are Harmful" take will age just like how "All videos are harmful" and "All cartoons are harmful" have aged.

miltonlost 10mo ago
Cool, but what about the rampant fraud portion of the article?
- simianwords 10mo ago
  that's cool. every new technology can be used in both ways
layer8 10mo ago
> I want to get the idea across as close as possible to what is in my head. In my experience, AI is poorly suited for that, unless what you have in mind is just some remix of what already exists.
andyfilms1 10mo ago
While I appreciate your positive experience, if you were unable to write, storyboard, and communicate your idea before AI--than AI is not going to be "the thing" that suddenly turns you into a filmmaker. You're writing anyway, you just call it prompting. If you feel that the AI is giving you back more than what you're putting in with that writing, you have to ask yourself who's vision the result really is.
- simianwords 10mo ago
  Would you say the same thing for cartoonists? Don’t call it film making, call it something else. You are just drawing. Your video camera is also giving you more than what you put in it.

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renewiltord 10mo ago

I can’t seem to figure out a good prompt for these yet. But there are people doing clever things (short clips with first frame previous last frame, instructions on the image of first frame, etc.) and I hope that over time these get to become as good as image models have.

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WackyFighter 10mo ago

His rationale ignores all the legitimate and harmless use cases for AI. I've seen people make with the help of AI comedy/meme/comedy music videos and put them up on YouTube. Making a hyperbolic statements stating that it is all harmful, because there are deceptive usages of AI is just asinine.

renegade-otter 10mo ago

Erase the barrier of entry for the unwashed masses, pardon my snob, and it will inevitably turn to shit. There has to be a middle ground between insurmountable obstacles and "whip your phone out, push button to generate, and send".

whywhywhywhy 10mo ago

If you couldn't have made the story into a short film before AI video then AI video isn't going to suddenly make you a talented film maker. Eventually one day you'll be able to put your vague story idea in and get a fully finished coherent well made movie out but currently if you lacked the talent before you're still lacking the talent today. We know this because actually existing talented film makers have done entertaining work with AI video. But it's silly to use it as justification to write it off just because you're not talented in the field.

Gagarin1917 10mo ago
It’s ridiculous to say everyone who has an idea for a film could have gotten it made already if they had the skill. There are endless amounts of people with real skill in the film industry that cannot get their movie made even though they have the connections and the experience. Famous filmmakers even experience this. Imagine the number of people who couldn’t break into the industry or simply don’t trust it? There are countless people around the world who have fully fleshed out ideas for films that producers won’t finance because literally billions of dollars are going to create ever more Marvel slop. You’re focusing on one type of person that may or may not have the skills. That’s just one specific scenario, there are many others to weight just as much. What about all those that do but can’t make it happen because of all the realities of life?
- whywhywhywhy 10mo ago
  > could have gotten it made already > cannot get their movie made even though they have the connections I'm talking about film makers, as in directors who can either hold the camera themselves or instruct someone else where to point it from a budget they provide or source. You seem to be conflating having the talent to actually make a short film yourself with script writers getting a production green lit on someone elses dime. Almost all successful directors have done the former at the start of their career.

waffletower 10mo ago

I think the concern of the author, that AI video ultimately "enable(s) those who want to manipulate, deceive, and exploit people for engagement, profit, or ideology", cannot be understated. However, the binary claim that the author doubles down on throughout, "All AI Videos Are Harmful", dilutes this messaging.

adamwong246 10mo ago

"synthetic reality" is my new favorite term.

nathias 10mo ago

> indirectly harmful by training us to accept a synthetic reality where nothing can be trusted and everything must be questioned. that's quite the definition of 'harmful'

Alex2037 10mo ago

okay. and? tilt at this windmill all you like, but the genie is out of the bottle and there's nothing you can do about it but kvetch. you can't ban it, you can't regulate it, no more than the US government could rein in cryptography.

YurgenJurgensen 10mo ago
None of these companies are making money, so all we need to do is wait until the VC money runs out and it turns out there’s no market for any of this slop if the people creating it have to actually pay for it.
unethical_ban 10mo ago
Did cryptography or Toy story 3D animation make every human need to question the reality of any electronic audio or video they encounter, no matter how realistic? Did cryptography make me have to train my parents not to trust my own voice if I make strange asks like money? There is a lot more to do for each other as a society to adjust to the new normal of AI, than just complain. Awareness and realignment are critical.
- Alex2037 10mo ago
  >cryptography cryptography enables spies, terrorists, criminals, and dissidents to communicate over any network with absolute impunity. if it was feasible, every government in the world would have banned or "regulated" it, as some had attempted to. but in the end, they had conceded defeat, and the world had not ended. >make every human need to question the reality of any electronic audio or video they encounter, no matter how realistic? you left out "images", which we learned to question decades ago. likewise, audio and video could also be manipulated with readily available, completely unregulated tools, to produce quite believable results.
  - unethical_ban 10mo ago
    I disagree with your final assertion. Completely or nearly-completely undetectable reproductions of reality, and specific human voices with intonation and generative vocabulary, have not been widely available before now to anyone with the will.

jajuuka 10mo ago

The author has a myopic view on Gen AI videos. They only focus on the most extreme examples and then hand wave cat videos as some crisis about reality. We had these exact same alarmists with previous technologies. Human's have an uncanny ability to adapt as their environment changes. Photoshop and 3D didn't destroy our brains and neither will this. Misinformation and the such have never needed AI to be effective. Those prey upon people's already existing biases and thoughts. The time where this becomes normal and these alarmists become the fringe crazies ranting about the end of civilization cannot come fast enough.

empath75 10mo ago
I think long term the primary use case for AI generated video is people creating AI generated video for themselves to watch as consumers, rather than passing off AI generated work as their own. I would not mind if I could go to ChatGPT and say: "Make me a 15 minute video about the history of gold mining in the Byzantine Empire", and it makes a mediocre soulless video I can half pay attention to while working. If I see a 15 minute video on youtube about it and I find out after starting to watch it that it was AI generated, it sends me into a blind rage that makes me want to delete the internet, though. Don't give me AI content unless I explicitly ask for it!
- jajuuka 10mo ago
  I agree that it feels like a bait and switch on YouTube. I expect to see user made videos there. Regardless of how much effort was put into it. I think a policy where these AI videos could be flagged as such would help a ton. Would not be an easy task though for sure.

umvi 10mo ago

> manipulating vulnerable viewers it always rubs me the wrong way when people infantilize the masses. The "vulnerable" masses already already partake in lots of harmful substances and practices (tobacco, alcohol, drugs, gambling/lotto), AI videos are just another potential pitfall people will need to learn to be wary of.

unethical_ban 10mo ago
I think "learning that absolutely nothing you see with your own eyes can be trusted as reality despite looking completely real" is a valid problem and that we are all somewhat vulnerable there.

tracker1 10mo ago

Not sure how much of this is AI vs other techniques, though it's definitely AI as part of the toolset. But I think the result speaks for itself, it's absolutely impressive the work that has come out. I can only say, that the work that went into this video is definitely real, and I'm happy to see more of this, as opposed to "AI Slop" that we're mostly seeing so far. https://youtu.be/SGJC4Hnz3m0?si=J_8gsXEx4-cL3Mc9 https://youtu.be/SGJC4Hnz3m0?si=J_8gsXEx4-cL3Mc9

miltonlost 10mo ago
I wonder how Mark Hammill likes that they reused his likeness without permission. Seems emblematic of the larger problems with AI stealing whatever. Very ghoulish..
- tracker1 10mo ago
  No idea... since Disney/Lucas already did this in Mandalorean, I'm sure he's open to the idea of it. In the specific instance, a non-commercial fan film, who knows. The fact that Disney/Lucas and others have already done so with dead actors, I'm not sure that fan films are any worse.

superkuh 10mo ago

This headline does not match the article at all. It claims all AI videos are harmful then immeidately goes on to throw this claim out and say old confused people might be fooled by the videos. This is a very narrow subset of AI videos. It's not just a pedantic issue. Making these kinds of extremely bold and all covering claims is par for the course for those who want to find and exploit attention from others for profit. If that's not what the author is doing I think the most charitable interpretation I can come up with is that they just have no experience with AI videos and are going off sensational press stories. They should buy an nvidia 3060 12GB ($200~ second hand) and try out wan2.2 on their home computer. It's really fun to be able to make these kind of videos on a whim. And they'll get some real lived experience with the subject.

its-summertime 10mo ago

> Or it's indirectly harmful by training us to accept a synthetic reality where nothing can be trusted and everything must be questioned. Good. Its beneficial, I'd think. Lies are not new, the amount of lies, probably not new either. I don't think we have (yet) reached a level of badness compared to the prior point of tobacco companies telling people around the world that cigarettes have medical benefits.

kcatskcolbdi 10mo ago

> Or it's indirectly harmful by training us to accept a synthetic reality where nothing can be trusted and everything must be questioned. I do find myself questioning the premise that accepting a 'synthetic reality where nothing can be trusted' is automatically bad. I've long felt that everyone took what they saw on the internet at face value when they should not. I do hope that injecting enough chaos into the system can force people to question their intake more consistently.

magic_hamster 10mo ago

(Please forgive the typos - I'm on my phone and didn't want to put this comment through AI...) This feels like a very strongly opinionated anti-AI echo chamber; while I absolutely recognize the destructive potential of AI video, I think the author is far off to the extreme end of completely ignoring every useful use case, and also, being somewhat naive. For example, trying to explain to people in your group chat why an AI video is fake, when they are not attentive to this message or never showed any sign they might care, and then being disappointed when nobody listens. Imagine crashing into a party and explaining to everybody why the music sucks and the food is bad; you might be right, but did you consider they just want to have a good time, and they just don't care? Since I've been to this rabbit hole myself, as I assume have many other readers with elderly parents, let me share my own experience. I've taken the time to show the older people in my family how AI works and how easy it is to create anything fake - including using their own appearance and voice! - and in the end of the day, they don't care. When forwarding a fake video, they say they know it's fake, but they still agree with the message, or liked the cute animals, so they forwarded it. This is old people for you. Now, I feel that during the post, the author has progressed from stating their own opinion on AI videos, to subtly claiming everybody hates AI videos and feel a physical sickness when seeing one, to the point that YouTube is scaring off viewers. This - while at the same time detailing how some people forward these videos like crazy. So which one is it? Well, I for one don't hate AI video as much as I hate bad, sloppy videos, but to be honest these have been around for a long time, there's a massive surge of misinformation and just aweful - and completely organic - videos out there. AI videos do open the door for very creative and awesome creations, and I've seen plenty of those, and enjoyed them quite a bit. This is just another tool. It's all up to you how you use it and what you create. Blaming the tool is just not going to work, just like blaming an instrument for the music being bad. The blame is with the composition, not the instrument. There will be a time, very soon, where you will not be able to tell it's AI. In fact, this time is now, and I assure you that some AI content in the right hands is just not distinguishable from the real thing anymore. You may have even seen, or - God help us - even enjoyed an AI generated video, without realizing it, and this will happen more often as these tools mature. This is just my 2 cents. I hope you will be able to finish you AI movie one day.

nomoreusernames 10mo ago

[dead]

epolanski 10mo ago

I have a huge beef with AI on YouTube. It's clear that plenty are doing the following: - find a random topic tied to their channel, e.g. some battle in Napoleonic wars - have Perplexity do as much research on the topic - have AI write a script for 20 minutes of it based on research - genAI images and video content - genAI the voiceover - profit I hate it. It's not even terrible content, nor it's not informative, but it's soulless and not very entertaining. Worst thing is that you're not told it's AI generated so you looking at pictures of the battle thinking they come from real paintings or something, so you maybe want to research more about that painting and it's all fake and not ai labeled. TikTok has it even worse. I think I've seen the "mother protects child from avalanche on a porch" variation in any goddamn way, with wolves, bears, people, deer, snow tigers..nothing is ai labeled and it all pretends to be genuine. Most videos about funny pets, which I loved, are also super fake. Labrador saves small child from falling tv, British shorthair chasing mastiff...all of this fake.. None of it labeled. It's slop after slop.

wang_li 10mo ago
AI content should be required by law to be flagged and described how the AI was used. It's bullshit when a channel pops up with a known person sitting facing the camera speaking for 20 minutes and it turns out to be entirely AI generated. The person in question not involved, the textual/spoken content is not their work, etc.
empath75 10mo ago
I have been blocking and reporting 90% of the "new" youtube channels that get recommended to me by the algorithm. Kids youtube is also an absolute wasteland of garbage AI generated crap now. Weirdly, I actually enjoy flipping through Sora every once in a while. Where it is upfront about being AI and a lot of it is quite entertaining. I would not mind if youtube added an "AI" section where you can generate your own videos or watch AI generated videos, but they need to start banning people that post AI generated videos in normal youtube channels.

dogprez 10mo ago

I'm not trying to detract from the OP's point but if the author turned the lens they are using to evaluate whether AI videos are harmful or not onto the videos one usually encountered on the internet pre-AI videos, I think they would find most internet videos are harmful by those same metrics. It's propaganda, rage-baiting, trying to manipulate you into buying something, etc. It's no wonder that's the sort of content we see being generated.

s1mon 10mo ago

All? Yes, there's a lot of garbage and outright dangerous, malicious stuff out there, but there's also moving art. It may take a while to drown out the stupid and evil stuff, but there are examples that amaze me: https://www.youtube.com/@kellyeld2323/videos https://www.youtube.com/@kellyeld2323/videos https://www.youtube.com/@alffx123/videos https://www.youtube.com/@alffx123/videos

camillomiller 10mo ago
Artistically not relevant enough to justify the downsides
- Gagarin1917 10mo ago
  There’s no “justifying” anything - the tech is here. Even if you ban it globally, it would actually stop be here and would still be able to cause harm - it would just not be able to be used for good either.
  - waisbrot 10mo ago
    The technology is currently being heavily subsidized and made widely available. If we decided to ban it globally things would look very different. Would it be worthwhile for scammers to run a massive server farm and spend thousands on training and generation? Maybe? It would certainly reduce the quantity.
    - Gagarin1917 10mo ago
      If you think the tech only exists via mega corporations apps, then you’re very misinformed. You can generate videos locally. The models anlready exist.
  - camillomiller 10mo ago
    The mirror climbing tech chaps are doing to justify the technology per se is the most baffling I’ve seen years of following in tech. It exists therefore it has to be out there. Imagine if we applied that to industrial chemicals, pharmaceutical products, or literally any other industrial endeavor. It’s particularly pathetic to watch the absolutely non-existent level of self reflection.

okokwhatever 10mo ago

Reading your messages, I've come to the personal conclusion that we live in an age of misunderstanding. We're incapable of reaching any useful, consensual agreements. This holds us back, halting progress that could be truly positive for humanity, because having a society that's moving in opposite directions keeps us stagnant. This has been going on for far too many years. Let AI users use it. And let's train those who are defenseless against this advancement so they can decide for themselves.

erelong 10mo ago

"All AI Videos are Harmful" Obviously an incorrect statement? I will grant that most AI-generated videos I've experienced seem like novelties... although they've generated plenty of "valuable" humor. Certainly not universal harm! Give it time for the tool to be improved and for people to make better use of it?

oytis 10mo ago

> Even the "harmless" AI videos contribute to a broader erosion of trust in visual media. Frankly, the sooner we lose this trust the better. It's better to adjust our expectations than to stay vulnerable to manipulations

nisegami 10mo ago

That Trump "Made in America" AI video making rounds last night was hilarious though.

deleted 10mo ago

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senfiaj 10mo ago

Some AI videos are harder and harder to distinguish from real ones. This terrifies me, since it's not that obvious AI fake that some average grandmother would fall for. In short videos, it is more difficult to distinguish AI fakes from real ones, because there is less time for some error or inconsistency to appear.

stickfigure 10mo ago

Nearly everyone on this website can quote "MongoDB is web scale" from memory. That was an AI-generated video (for a very primitive definition of AI). I think we're all pretty ok with the concept.

dfacto 10mo ago

I didn't have time to read all the comments but here is Claude's summary for those interested: ``` 1. "Good AI work exists when humans stay involved" Quality AI videos exist but require human editing, scripting, acting - not letting AI do 99% of the work. Examples: NeuralViz, Igorrr's music videos. 2. "AI removes creativity, doesn't enable it" AI handles creative decisions (color grading, cuts, tone) that were previously human craft. This strips creativity from the process rather than democratizing it. 3. "Execution is the creativity" Ideas are worthless - execution is what matters. AI removes the execution process, which is where real creative work happens. "Using AI is like using an aimbot for music." 4. "AI enables creative expression for those locked out" Counter-position: High-concept filmmaking was previously only for the privileged. AI lets people with vision but without technical skills/money/connections realize their ideas. 5. "Race to the bottom / slop flood" AI's main "strength" is cranking out content at scale, flooding platforms with low-quality material faster than humans can filter. The internet is being overrun with unlabeled AI garbage. 6. "Trust erosion is the real harm" Even "harmless" AI videos contribute to a world where nothing visual can be trusted. This affects everyone regardless of whether they consume AI content directly. 7. "Theft at scale" Models exist only because of mass ingestion of creative work without consent. Using AI tools participates in this regardless of output quality. 8. "Platforms will adapt / people will learn" Optimistic view: Recommendation algorithms will filter slop, people will recognize AI aesthetic as they did MS Paint edits, and good content will surface. ``` Personal take: all these points are true/valid/correct/accurate. Controversial take: regardless, cat's outta the bag now and there's little we can do to stop it.

evrenesat 10mo ago
My personal take: All AI comments are harmful, including summaries. Now I have to update my hn comment summarizer prompt to ignore comments like this.

didntknowyou 10mo ago

my favourite AI videos are the obviously fake ones like cats working menial jobs. everything else can go.

veunes 10mo ago

The author nailed the problem but missed the technical root cause: lack of controllability. Current models (Sora, Veo, Runway) are probabilistic generators. They are optimized to output a plausible image, not the specific image a director needs. Spammers and scammers don't care about specifics, they just need a "talking head" or a "burning city." An artist however needs a specific angle, specific lighting, and character consistency. Until we solve the problem of reliable latent space control (something like ControlNet, but for video and on steroids), AI video will remain a tool for generating digital noise, not cinema

jamesfisher 10mo ago

Does this really need a (2025) clarification? That was 6 days ago