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I find the sound is a dead giveaway for most AI videos — the voices all sound like a low bitrate MP3. Which will eventually get worked around and can easily be

I find the sound is a dead giveaway for most AI videos — the voices all sound like a low bitrate MP3. Which will eventually get worked around and can easily be masked by just having a backing track.

fsckboy 9mo ago
that sounds like one of the worst heuristics I've ever heard, worse than "em-dash=ai" (em-dash equals ai to the illiterate class, who don't know what they are talking about on any subject and who also don't use em-dashes, but literate people do use em-dashes and also know what they are talking about. this is called the Dunning-Em-Dash Effect, where "dunning" refers to the payback of intellectual deficit whereas the illiterate think it's a name)
- root_axis 9mo ago
  The audio artifacts of an AI generated video are a far more reliable heuristic than the presence of a single character in a body of text.
  - dorfsmay 9mo ago
    For now. A year ago they weren't even Gen AI videos. Give it a few months...
  - dragonwriter 9mo ago
    Well, its probably lower false positive than en-dash but higher false negative, especially since AI generated video, even when it has audio, may not have AI generated audio. (Generation conditioned on a text prompt, starting image, and audio track is among the common modes for AI video generation.)
- fuzzer371 9mo ago
  No one uses em dashes
  - awakeasleep 9mo ago
    Except for highly literate people, and people who care about typography. Think about it— the robots didn’t invent the em-dash. They’re copying it from somewhere.
    - amrocha 9mo ago
      My impression of people that say they’re em dash users is that they’re laundering their dunning kruger through AI.
  - rmunn 9mo ago
    Except for Emily Dickenson, who is an outlier and should not be counted. Seriously, she used dashes all the time. Here is a direct copy and paste of the first two stanzas of her poem "Because I count not stop for Death" from the first source I found, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47652/because-i-could-not-stop-for-death-479 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47652/because-i-could... Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality. We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility – Her dashes have been rendered as en dashes in this particular case rather than em dashes, but unless you're a typography enthusiast you might not notice the difference (I certainly didn't and thought they were em dashes at first). I would bet if I hunted I would find some places where her poems have been transcribed with em dashes. (It's what I would have typed if I were transcribing them).
    - Finnucane 9mo ago
      Here is an image of the original manuscript page: https://www.edickinson.org/editions/1/image_sets/12174893 https://www.edickinson.org/editions/1/image_sets/12174893 Dickinson's dashes tended to vary over time, and were not typeset during her lifetime (mostly). Also, mid-19th century usage was different—the em-dash was a relatively new thing.
  - crimony 9mo ago
    Microsoft Word automatically converts dashes to em dashes as soon as you hit space at the end of the next word after the dash.
- Duanemclemore 9mo ago
  The em-dash=LLM thing is so crazy. For many years Microsoft Word has AUTOCORRECTED the typing of a single hyphen to the proper syntax for the context -- whether a hyphen, en-dash, or em-dash. I would wager good money that the proliferation of em-dashes we see in LLM-generated text is due to the fact that there are so many correctly used em-dashes in publicly-available text, as auto-corrected by Word...
  - XorNot 9mo ago
    Which would matter but the entry box in no major browser do was this. The HN text area does not insert em-dashes for you and never has. On my phone keyboard it's a very lot deliberate action to add one (symbol mode, long press hyphen, slide my finger over to em-dash). The entire point is it's contextual - emdashes where no accomodations make them likely.
    - Duanemclemore 9mo ago
      Yeah, I get that. And I'm not saying the author is wrong, just commenting on that one often-commented-upon phenomenon. If text is being input to the field by copy-paste (from another browser tab) anyway, who's to say it's not (hypothetically) being copied and pasted from the word processor in which it's being written?
    - bee_rider 9mo ago
      Is this—not an em-dash? On iOS I generated it by double tapping dash. I think there are more iOS users than AIs, although I could be wrong about that…
- D-Machine 9mo ago
  Thank you for saving me the time writing this. Nothing screams midwit like "Em-dash = AI". If AI detection was this easy, we wouldn't have the issues we have today.
- kelvie 9mo ago
  Of note is theother terrible heuristic I've seen thrown around, where "emojis = AI", and now the "if you use not X, but Y = AI".
  - wjholden 9mo ago
    Similarly: "The indication for machine-generated text isn't symbolic. It's structural." I always liked this writing device, but I've seen people label it artificial.
  - bee_rider 9mo ago
    Em-dashes are completely innocent. “Not X but Y” is some lame rhetorical device, I’m glad it is catching strays.
  - bhaak 9mo ago
    With the right context both are pretty good actually. I think the emoji one is most pronounced in bullet point lists. AI loves to add an emoji to bullet points. I guess they got it from lists in hip GitHub projects. The other one is not as strong but if the "not X but Y" is somewhat nonsensical or unnecessary this is very strong indicator it's AI.
    - zahlman 9mo ago
      >I guess they got it from lists in hip GitHub projects. I see this way more often on GitHub now than I did before, though.
  - icedchai 9mo ago
    When I see emojis in code, especially log statements, it is 100% giveaway AI was involved. Worse, it is an indicator the developer was lazy and didn't even try to clean up the most basic slop.

fsckboy 9mo ago

that sounds like one of the worst heuristics I've ever heard, worse than "em-dash=ai" (em-dash equals ai to the illiterate class, who don't know what they are talking about on any subject and who also don't use em-dashes, but literate people do use em-dashes and also know what they are talking about. this is called the Dunning-Em-Dash Effect, where "dunning" refers to the payback of intellectual deficit whereas the illiterate think it's a name)

root_axis 9mo ago
The audio artifacts of an AI generated video are a far more reliable heuristic than the presence of a single character in a body of text.
- dorfsmay 9mo ago
  For now. A year ago they weren't even Gen AI videos. Give it a few months...
- dragonwriter 9mo ago
  Well, its probably lower false positive than en-dash but higher false negative, especially since AI generated video, even when it has audio, may not have AI generated audio. (Generation conditioned on a text prompt, starting image, and audio track is among the common modes for AI video generation.)
fuzzer371 9mo ago
No one uses em dashes
- awakeasleep 9mo ago
  Except for highly literate people, and people who care about typography. Think about it— the robots didn’t invent the em-dash. They’re copying it from somewhere.
  - amrocha 9mo ago
    My impression of people that say they’re em dash users is that they’re laundering their dunning kruger through AI.
- rmunn 9mo ago
  Except for Emily Dickenson, who is an outlier and should not be counted. Seriously, she used dashes all the time. Here is a direct copy and paste of the first two stanzas of her poem "Because I count not stop for Death" from the first source I found, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47652/because-i-could-not-stop-for-death-479 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47652/because-i-could... Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality. We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility – Her dashes have been rendered as en dashes in this particular case rather than em dashes, but unless you're a typography enthusiast you might not notice the difference (I certainly didn't and thought they were em dashes at first). I would bet if I hunted I would find some places where her poems have been transcribed with em dashes. (It's what I would have typed if I were transcribing them).
  - Finnucane 9mo ago
    Here is an image of the original manuscript page: https://www.edickinson.org/editions/1/image_sets/12174893 https://www.edickinson.org/editions/1/image_sets/12174893 Dickinson's dashes tended to vary over time, and were not typeset during her lifetime (mostly). Also, mid-19th century usage was different—the em-dash was a relatively new thing.
- crimony 9mo ago
  Microsoft Word automatically converts dashes to em dashes as soon as you hit space at the end of the next word after the dash.
Duanemclemore 9mo ago
The em-dash=LLM thing is so crazy. For many years Microsoft Word has AUTOCORRECTED the typing of a single hyphen to the proper syntax for the context -- whether a hyphen, en-dash, or em-dash. I would wager good money that the proliferation of em-dashes we see in LLM-generated text is due to the fact that there are so many correctly used em-dashes in publicly-available text, as auto-corrected by Word...
- XorNot 9mo ago
  Which would matter but the entry box in no major browser do was this. The HN text area does not insert em-dashes for you and never has. On my phone keyboard it's a very lot deliberate action to add one (symbol mode, long press hyphen, slide my finger over to em-dash). The entire point is it's contextual - emdashes where no accomodations make them likely.
  - Duanemclemore 9mo ago
    Yeah, I get that. And I'm not saying the author is wrong, just commenting on that one often-commented-upon phenomenon. If text is being input to the field by copy-paste (from another browser tab) anyway, who's to say it's not (hypothetically) being copied and pasted from the word processor in which it's being written?
  - bee_rider 9mo ago
    Is this—not an em-dash? On iOS I generated it by double tapping dash. I think there are more iOS users than AIs, although I could be wrong about that…
D-Machine 9mo ago
Thank you for saving me the time writing this. Nothing screams midwit like "Em-dash = AI". If AI detection was this easy, we wouldn't have the issues we have today.
kelvie 9mo ago
Of note is theother terrible heuristic I've seen thrown around, where "emojis = AI", and now the "if you use not X, but Y = AI".
- wjholden 9mo ago
  Similarly: "The indication for machine-generated text isn't symbolic. It's structural." I always liked this writing device, but I've seen people label it artificial.
- bee_rider 9mo ago
  Em-dashes are completely innocent. “Not X but Y” is some lame rhetorical device, I’m glad it is catching strays.
- bhaak 9mo ago
  With the right context both are pretty good actually. I think the emoji one is most pronounced in bullet point lists. AI loves to add an emoji to bullet points. I guess they got it from lists in hip GitHub projects. The other one is not as strong but if the "not X but Y" is somewhat nonsensical or unnecessary this is very strong indicator it's AI.
  - zahlman 9mo ago
    >I guess they got it from lists in hip GitHub projects. I see this way more often on GitHub now than I did before, though.
- icedchai 9mo ago
  When I see emojis in code, especially log statements, it is 100% giveaway AI was involved. Worse, it is an indicator the developer was lazy and didn't even try to clean up the most basic slop.