Technology

Just watched a "Feynman" video on Youtube I thought was a little off. Especially when one of the examples simply seemed outright wrong.
But I thought it was probably me who misunderstood something. Until I read the description, and it turned out his voice was recreated by AI, and the "lecture" was designed by an unknown person to be in the "spirit" of Feynman!

It had Feynman's name all over it, and then in the description they end it with:

No impersonation is intended

When they had his name all over it, and the title claims it's a lecture by Feynman which it absolutely wasn't, and they use AI to simulate his voice!! How is that not impersonating? That shit should be outright illegal, it is fraud, Feynman had nothing to do with the content, and it even had mistakes!

Unfortunately on Youtube I can't find a way to block a channel after having seen the video. That option seems to only be available on my start page for the suggested videos on that page.
I have blocked hundreds of AI crap channels, and they keep popping up.

Slop videos have clogged the recommendations on youtube since well before the AI era. Top 10 clickbait videos with text to speech narration...

I tried watching what was supposed to be a video comparing several linux distros. Instead, it was AI text to speech narrating over random images. Are people uploading this crap in an attempt to get a share of ad revenue, or just to be awful? I have to hope Youtube doesn't let this be fully automated, so people are doing this on purpose...

Don't see the slop because I only use subscriptions feed.

To expand on this, I have witnessed small, indie channels have their content copied, processed through AI so it is stripped of audio, watermarks and re-edited. Then it is posted as a new video. When it is reported as a fake, or pirated copy, or not original content, Google then puts the burden of proof on the small indie channel that originally created the content, often requiring them to lawyer up and file a legal complaint, before they will take any action to remove the AI slop. It is fucking absurd. It would only take a real person about 60 seconds to compare the content and dates to determine who is the theif.

The other 70% are non-AI brainrot videos. 1% has any value.

At Christmas the topic of what videos we watch came up and I was shocked to hear over half the people there mention watching AI videos. Its insane, these are decent intelligent people watching shit like that stupid weightlifting cat and bigfoot vlogging. It seemed mostly because they couldn't get rid of YouTube shorts but still. The family members who used Instagram had it way worse they only consumed reels slop and didnt watch any long form video. It was really are "we are so cooked moment".

You see a lot of ai videos of prominent personalities, seriously doubt they have permission to use their identity.

And yet I don't see any of that. Lots of people complain about "the algorithm" but it seems to be working well for me.

When new channels show up on my recommendations I like to check out how old the channels are, especially if the quality is low or the voice is a clear or probably robot. AI channels don't tend to be very old, and they tend to have insanely high upload speeds. Cranking out hour-long, edited, topical (not gameplay for example) videos every single day is hard as hell and nobody can do it without building up to it with editors and maybe script writers.

For example, Simon Whistler is the most prolific video creator I can think of and he's got a crew to do it full time, but he's been at it for ages and he's there in all the videos.

I hate it that channels that never before had face cams are increasingly having to use them or otherwise change things because it's the easiest way (for now) to prove they're actual humans. But that's the hell we've been dragged into.

Would be nice if youtube made it easier to block channels.

Meaning that the only thing that changed is that it is "AI" and that they can cram out more bullshit in less time.

We spend more energy to create more videos and use more storage

Are brainrot videos the ones where someone on an impossibly clean set hides the 5 seconds of info you were promised somewhere in a 20 minute video the purports to explain the process you need and it end up no longer matching the software’s UI?

Asking for a friend ;-)