Making Cash Off 'AI Slop': the Surreal Video Business Taking Over the Web (msn.com) 83
The Washington Post looks at the rise of low-effort, high-volume "AI slop" videos:
The major social media platforms, scared of driving viewers away, have tried to crack down on slop accounts, using AI tools of their own to detect and flag videos they believe were synthetically made. YouTube last month said it would demonetize creators for "inauthentic" and "mass-produced" content. But the systems are imperfect, and the creators can easily spin up new accounts — or just push their AI tools to pump out videos similar to the banned ones, dodging attempts to snuff them out.
One place where they're coming from... Jiaru Tang, a researcher at the Queensland University of Technology who recently interviewed creators in China, said AI video has become one of the hottest new income opportunities there for workers in the internet's underbelly, who previously made money writing fake news articles or running spam accounts. Many university students, stay-at-home moms and the recently unemployed now see AI video as a kind of gig work, like driving an Uber. The average small creator she interviewed did their day jobs and then, at night, "spent two to three hours making AI-slop money," she said. A few she spoke with made $2,000 to $3,000 a month at it.
But the article provides other examples of the "wild cottage industry of AI-video makers, enticed by the possibility of infinite creation for minimal work"
One place where they're coming from... Jiaru Tang, a researcher at the Queensland University of Technology who recently interviewed creators in China, said AI video has become one of the hottest new income opportunities there for workers in the internet's underbelly, who previously made money writing fake news articles or running spam accounts. Many university students, stay-at-home moms and the recently unemployed now see AI video as a kind of gig work, like driving an Uber. The average small creator she interviewed did their day jobs and then, at night, "spent two to three hours making AI-slop money," she said. A few she spoke with made $2,000 to $3,000 a month at it.
But the article provides other examples of the "wild cottage industry of AI-video makers, enticed by the possibility of infinite creation for minimal work"
- A 31-year-old loan officer in eastern Idaho first went viral in June "with an AI-generated video on TikTok in which a fake but lifelike old man talked about soiling himself. Within two weeks, he had used AI to pump out 91 more, mostly showing fake street interviews and jokes about fat people to an audience that has surged past 180,000 followers..." (He told the Post the videos earn him about $5,000 a month through TikTok's creator program.)
- "To stand out, some creators have built AI-generated influencers with lives a viewer can follow along. 'Why does everybody think I'm AI? ... I'm a human being, just like you guys,' says the AI woman in one since-removed TikTok video, which was watched more than 1 million times."
- One AI-generated video a dog biting a woman's face off (revealing a salad) received a quarter of a billion views.
Some eat it up (Score:5, Interesting)
This morning I observed an elderly couple browsing Facebook. They came across one of these AI-generated videos. It showed a ferry boat packed with people sinking in some garish/cartoonish/unrealistic manner - didn't see the video myself, but I heard the audio, the screaming. The wife seemed to be captivated by it, calling over the husband to take a look as well. It looped a half-dozen times and they discussed how it was probably fake due to the motion of the boat.
Obviously there is a market for this kind of stuff, and the Zuc would definitely be getting metrics showing at least a portion of users engage with this content.
What will be interesting is seeing how the split between people who like this stuff, and the people who want to turn it all off, shakes out.
Re: Some eat it up (Score:1, Troll)
Why are the people who want to turn it all off so self-righteously sure they know what's best for everyone else?
Is that the real problem here, that AI is just the latest thing to make some people grumpy about the bad choices (in their view) others are making and how that will change their lives for the worse?
What if people minded their own business and stopped reaching for the ban hammer whenever anything upsets their sensibilities in the least?
Speaking from experience, do bans make people far more depresse
Re: Some eat it up (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
There is no shortage of people who know best what someone else should be doing.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: Some eat it up (Score:1)
Can I be opposed to long-term succesful cultures by nonviolently not cooperating with them? If not, why can't your long-term successful culture give me an easy way to opt out? Why have I been driving around the country looking for a place I can die in peace but every camping spot is subject to people showing up at any time?
Re: Some eat it up (Score:4, Insightful)
It's objectively bad because it teaches people to believe bullshit and the cost (measured in natural resources) is immense.
Re: (Score:1)
Wasn't the same argument used to ban Trump?
What are you talking about?
lol (Score:2)
Downmodded by the "just asking questions" klan for asking a serious question. Who tried to ban Donald Dump, when, and how?
Re: (Score:2)
Everything has limits and we all still have to live in society and if we see things that are broadly harmful we can decide to limit them. Have we reached that point with AI yet? I would say no but it's definitely starting to rack up some points in that direction.
Putting aside the philosophical issue of free expression what benefit or social utility to the people watching to or to our collective life in general is the fake drowning video providing? It provides a profit for the person making the video and wha
Re: (Score:2)
The "upside", if you believe some of the posters here, is that Grandma is being "entertained". (I feel like this is a negative reflection on those posters, on Grandma, and on the people manipulating all of them.)
The question of whether to ban a form of entertainment is: How damaging it is to others? Smashing mailboxes is pretty clearly damaging. So is the drain of AI.
Re: Some eat it up (Score:2)
If everyone just watched TV passively, would you conclude that TV is a drain that needs to be banned?
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on how much energy is being used. I get the feeling it's not at the scale of AI. I don't recall hearing about TVs threatening the electrical grid, even the old CRTs.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Why are the people who want to turn it all off so self-righteously sure they know what's best for everyone else?
I don't really have a problem if people actually enjoy this stuff, that's not really the issue. The real problem is that, for some people at least, over-indulgence seems to distort their sense of reality. Now, this has always been a bit of an issue. Even decades ago I encountered people who thought that we had sent astronauts to Mars or even had FTL travel because they had seen it in movies and on TV. It's just that today, it seems like we're seeing this more and more. I mean, it's hard to deny that the per
Re: Some eat it up (Score:2)
How distorted is Trump's sense of reality, and how successful were attempts to ban him?
Re: (Score:2)
Now, I'm not saying we should ban anything.
How distorted is Trump's sense of reality, and how successful were attempts to ban him?
Only you are talking about banning things. You did it in a reply to one of my comments and you're doing it here, too. Why don't you learn to stay on topic?
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I wasn't actually talking about Trump's sense of reality. Rather the apparent shift in perception of the public that led to a reality TV character being allowed to become President. If you do want to bring Trump's own sense of reality into it, then we could talk about US Civil War airports, the size of his inauguration crowds, that it didn't rain at his first inauguration, "“So far we have lost nobody to coronavirus," (Trump, after 3000 or so confirmed deaths), the time he stood next to division
Re: (Score:2)
I assume it's because it's interfering with their use of the web/site. Which is a real problem, but doesn't bother everyone equally.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a serious question somewhere in this discussion about where to draw the line between what would be considered censorship and what is simply basic protection against attack in the digital age. This is, in fact, not a new question. It goes back nearly fifty years to the origin of things like BBS and Usenet. Basically, before digital communications, there were simple physical limits to how much any individual could communicate. Block printing has been around for ages, but it wasn't super easy, and pap
Re: (Score:2)
I saw three versions of this video today.
It was very odd and obviously fake (the one I watched through).
It was about 8 seconds long and still felt like a waste. The Facebook reels are getting over run with AI videos. Most are just hot girls walking around, some are stupid little things like the unrealistic boat just kinda sinking like it's walking down stairs.
Hopefully this will drop the quality enough that I find better uses of my life than social media ...
Pop culture has always been mindless (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether made by people or robots
It's hard to imagine that this will be any worse that all of the other silly fads and trends
It's also hard to imagine that it will be possible to make any money doing it in the future
Re: (Score:2)
The core problem is that it may be hard to filter out.
Yes we got dumb fads; but even the dumbest fad "take it or double it for the next person" takes some time to make. Here you might be seeing a single person pumping 10 of those per day.
Re: Pop culture has always been mindless (Score:2)
Is that the 1990s calling, asking for their complaints about spam email back? Should we have banned email?
Re:Pop culture has always been mindless (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For every 1 person who does that, there are 20 who try and can't. The market is only so big.
Besides, playing videogames actually takes time and a modicum of effort. AI slop doesn't. The market in AI slop is going to be much more saturated than the market for videogame slop.
Re: (Score:2)
Very true
Maybe, someday, the teens or whatever will get sick of watching the fakes who look like their favorite internet personality, and go back to watching that personality themselves (if the original personality is even doing stuff anymore... kinda like what happened with the YouTube channel 'Explore With Us' https://www.youtube.com/@Explo... [youtube.com]
It was a father/daughter team that would go and do UrbEx stuff (people loved that), then suddenly it became an AI voice narrating true crime stuff (boring).
Re: Pop culture has always been mindless (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, okay.
Even still, they (the father/daughter) should've either kept going with the original idea, or just made a vlog where they ended the show and left the rest up.
Turning it into a true crime thing just doesn't work... I can watch the same stuff on TV if I really want.
Re: (Score:2)
Always, no.
Frequently and increasingly, yes.
The Beatles (for just the most obvious top-line example) produced thoughtful pop music, particularly in their later period.
Re: Pop culture has always been mindless (Score:2)
Your POV is not universally agreed upon.
Even if I happen to agree.
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the... (Score:5, Informative)
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." --attributed to H. L. Mencken (1880–1956)
Re: (Score:2)
Easy to spot... mostly (Score:2)
Most A.I. junk videos are easy to spot handily.. and if you don't manage to notice, just go to the comments. There'll be someone calling it out for being fake.
Re: Easy to spot... mostly (Score:3)
So what's the point in banning them? Morality?
Re: (Score:2)
Having a usable service. I don't use regular social media, but I imagine most users aren't intending to spend their day filtering, spotting, and avoiding content. There's probably something else they'd rather do on the site.
The closest thing to social media I use, YouTube, has definitely become less usable due to AI. I used to get interesting music recommendations from them on occasion, but the last few I clicked on were AI garbage. I don't anticipate clicking on many more, there are other places I can go f
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly - because we are human beings who (mostly) want to communicate ideas/thoughts/humour/life experiences etc to other human beings. If you called your friend/mother and there was a chorus of bots pumping deafening white noise down the line you would complain to your phone company no? It defeats the purpose of media/communications for meâ¦
Re: Easy to spot... mostly (Score:2)
What if your friend/mother doesn't really want to talk to you and uses an AI instead?
Re: (Score:1)
What if that was the case? They wouldnt be trying to talk to me then would they? Is that a problem you grapple with blue trane? (good allusion in the name there btw :) I take it youre heavily invested in AI?
Re: (Score:2)
This comment is junk and fake! /s ;)
So what? (Score:3)
Lots of people tolerate and even embrace what many others consider slop in tons of areas. Little Caesar's keeps making pizzas, Kevin Hart keeps making movies, and Johnny Somali kept posting content. Until recently.
The fact that it's trivial doesn't automatically push it below the low bar we already set routinely as a consumer culture.
Don't like it? No problem. Make some content that you feel should resonate better with the public and see how it goes. Just don't overestimate your audience's capacity for flippancy.
Re: (Score:2)
Little Caesar's keeps making pizzas
This thing is not like the others, nobody buys these if they can afford better pizzas. They can know they're slop and still buy them. Every time I bought them, I knew. Every time I bought them, I was also poor AF.
Re: So what? (Score:2)
What if I have no real friends and AI slop is the best entertainment I can muster?
Re: (Score:2)
What if I have no real friends and AI slop is the best entertainment I can muster?
What if you are a very small shell script?
Fuck Google. (Score:1)
Not Hard to Understand Why (Score:1, Insightful)
People watch AI slop because YouTube promotes it. YouTube then penalizes and destroys people who make authentic content, usually by turning a robot loose on their livelihoods and just sweeping them all into the street, facts notwithstanding. Very similar to the job and dating markets, coincidentally.
Meanwhile, Tiktok simply won't allow anything out of the 100-view cage unless it is a) cleavage with a PINK logo in the frame or b) shock and outrage bait. Anyone capable of producing non-slop content has long
I'm an old man (Score:2)
Absolutely everything else has been shit on a shingle. I guess video games are better. I mean it kind of has to be when you're a competition is pong consoles and the Atari 2600 but honestly I would trade a functioning civilization for
Re: (Score:2)
What do you mean stop a hurricane with a nuke?
(This is the first I've heard of this)
Why opposed? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't understand why anyone opposes this.
It sounds like a great way for minimally skilled people to bypass being a wage slave and market in-demand product (videos) direct to consumers, thus screwing over "the man". It also seems like a great way for retired people, the disabled, and various other sorts of people to make an income when they otherwise would not be able to. An awesome way to "distribute wealth" with minimal negative impact.
On the flip side, if you don't want to watch such videos, then don't
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Why opposed? (Score:2)
Is Trump's case a warning to you that trying to ban what you don't like can backfire spectacularly (see also War on Drugs, etc.)?
Re:Why opposed? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's the environmental impact - autogenerated AI stuff tends to require expensive server farms that just churn CPU power endlessly. Similar to Cryptocurrency - endless CPU churning just to keep a trustless database secure.
There's the quality impact. AI Generated content would be less likely to come up with works similar to some of the D&D films where actors are coreographed to make their attacks every 6 seconds, and possibly bland or sterile as the generator chases after the most probable result.
There's the economic impact, it pulls money away from those who are skilled, and into the hands of those who are unskilled - or perhaps elite tech bros that can endlessly spin the slot machine in hopes of getting something that's accidently viral.
There's the bandwagon impact, everyone does the make-money-fast trick, and thus collapses that method of income.
There's the archival impact. Even though the number of potential books is infinite, libraries do a good job at keeping a large chunk of what's been published. Now, there's infinite content generated at the press of the button.
There's the copyright impact. If you use AI content, you don't know where's it's taken from, and authors that were trained on said AI aren't receiving anything for their work. Additionally, the AI companies take works from others, but prefer withholding their own data.
There's the bubble impact. AI companies are currently inflating themselves due to investor or stock market hype, and have a good chance to collapse.
And finally, the long-term skill impact. People are allegedly becoming dumber due to AI, likely because they take ChatGPT at their word without verifying it, and people aren't being educated in a way that lets them reproduce what's needed in the future.
UBI is easier to implement. Kills wage slavery, and if corps want workers they can start paying properly rather than constantly ramming things down to minimum wage.
Re: (Score:1)
In other words, you hate poor people. Got it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm here to help!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In your dreams (;
Re: (Score:2)
In other words, you hate poor people. Got it.
Someone who supports UBI "hates" poor people in the sense of not wanting people to be poor, much like this famous saying: God loves the poor; that's why He made so many of them.
Re: (Score:2)
So... you think that just because someone feeds a prompt to an "AI" thing, and has it generate a video, that causes an increase in the amount of electricity that rack of computers 'someplace' uses?
It uses that power regardless... if you send it something, it uses power... if you don't, it uses power!
The only way the "AI" problem goes away is if absolutely not a soul uses it... which isn't going to happen because 'it makes entering data to a database or something easier' or 'it makes programming some random
Re: (Score:2)
CPUs and GPUs can be idle. While they're idle, they consume less electricity, generate less heat, which causes the cooling system to likewise use less electricity.
Additionally, a server farm that doesn't need all servers running can have some of the servers power down, thus saving more electricity than simply bein
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, they'll go idle for the millionth of a second until something else comes along that needs processor. The YouTuber who generates that AI video isn't the only user on that "one server in the corner, top of the rack"... I know how that works.
Powering down and starting up takes more power than just keeping it running (and is tons less wear-and-tear on the machine(s)... off-and-on generates heat and cooling cycles that can break solder joints)... I know, from experience. Would you rather use a little mor
Re: (Score:2)
UBI is easier to implement. Kills wage slavery, and if corps want workers they can start paying properly rather than constantly ramming things down to minimum wage.
"If you do not do anything for me, why should I give you money?"
Until you can answer that reasonably, I will support economic fairness rather than handouts. I 'get' the conservatives and I 'get' the liberals. Unfortunately, both sides are stupid and blind.
Re: (Score:2)
"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, âoeit is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen
Re: (Score:2)
Written communication is so hard to decipher.
Did you notice the quotes that I put around the "why" question? The reason they are there is because that is the simplest question possible that the majority of people will respond to. And if you can't answer that reasonably, your ideas will go nowhere.
That actual question is from an extremely limited point of view and is not a question I would directly ask myself.
There is some Truth to the question. "Why should I help others when others are not helping me?"
But u
Re: (Score:2)
"Then don't" is precisely Google's fear. They want users. Users don't necessarily want to consume creamed crap. Some surely do, but they want those other users too.
There are two types of users,
(I) Those who will consume whatever's on the plate,
(II) Those who look for quality.
They have Type I locked in - whether they ban AI or not. But failing to ban AI, they may lose Type II.
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot the third type:
Those who find something else to do.
Re: (Score:2)
That is Type II. They would find something else to do.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: Why opposed? (Score:2)
What if you're hallucinating false positives?
Re: (Score:2)
If so, it will be a short lived phenomenon. Think about it. If you have people producing AI slop and making a profit, AI is going to enable consolidation in that market. In other words if there's real profit to be made there, the role of the producers will be taken over by AI.
No funny? (Score:2)
Sadness.
How are they any stupider ... (Score:2)
Hollywood slop (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
What is the difference between Hollywood slop and AI slop?
More humans got paid to make the hollywood slop.
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty sure there are more than 2 million delusional religious/spiritual farkwits out there so the answer, unsurprisingly for our garbage species, is *yes*
It is slop. And the consumers of said slop? Well, they're just truly awful.
Relevant LastWeekTonight (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I have VERY LITTLE social media and really don't use anything that I do have. But if this is what most of it is becoming/has become, I'm more than OK with that.
How many of those 'views'... (Score:2)
...are AI company robots crawling the site for content?