The state of AI video
This video is a bit goofy in content, but I came across this youtube short of an MMA fighter "Seamus O'Grady". I don't know all that much about MMA, but I find it somewhat interesting and look up more clips about the dude. I then try looking up who this guy is online, and he's entirely AI generated from what I can gather (youtube comments say he's AI and there are no pages online about him).
These videos are basically indistinguishable from reality. The biggest "tell" is just how surreal the actual situation is, not necessarily the ability of AI to generate something life-like. And, of course, AI generated video will only get better. As far as I'm concerned, we've officially reached the point, in a completely non-hyperbolic way, where there's basically no reason to believe that what you're seeing online is real, unless it's coming from the verified account of a "legacy" creator.
There are some major questions that now get raised. Is video as evidence at all basically a thing of the past? How can we admit video evidence into a court of law, perhaps unless it's played directly off a recording device that's technologically incapable of having video uploaded to it? Is citizen journalism even possible now? How can we trust, from today onwards, that we aren't being fed a narrative by even traditional media that's a complete literal fiction?
There are times where things are stated to be AI-generated on social media but I agree, we're going to have to start separating ourselves from the "new" internet and go back to older ways of viewing things, whether it be TV or mainstream news outlets, or even just "official" pages and accounts for social media/video. And even those sources can be fooled at times.
It's another reason I'm on Tildes over reddit, it's another reason I carefully monitor my kids' screentime and don't allow them to watch youtube by themselves, and a reason we pay extra for no ads and no autoplay. It's going to warp the minds and perceptions of future generations, and the best thing I can think is to get ahead and let people know that and watch what I myself am doing. What people decide after is their own decision.
I don't think we're going to be able to go back. The fundamental assumption that we can differentiate media into reality and synthetic is gone. We'll need to start relying on something else. I have high hopes for apples "reference image" tech that should allow us to have some confidence in the media we see. But for us older folks it might be hard to break the assumption that we can tell real vs fake instinctively.
I agree we're on our way to AI video looking pretty indistinguishable from raw video, at least as a glance. This video still hits me with big uncanny valley vibes in the movements, but I agree the generated videos are getting better and better. I remain optimistic that generated videos and pictures will always retain some of the generative artifacts when you zoom way in and odd features, but who knows, maybe they'll figure out a way to clean those up. I sure hope it's always possible to detect these, at least forensically.
But for the every day person without third party verification to backup if an image or video is real, you're right. We might be at the point where we just assume everything online is fake unless we can verify otherwise.
Video will be perfectly admissable in court. Court isn't some robotic affair, it's human driven, in the end. It's not like a Phoenix Wright game where evidence is evidence, and it's definitely true.
The defense will be able to throw doubt on any evidence the prosecution brings up. They can bring in expert witnesses who can identify AI-like artifacts. They can simply appeal to the fact that AI video is possible. They can make their own AI video to prove that it's possible to fabricate such evidence. Remember, the onus is on the prosecution to prove their case, the defense just needs to cast doubt.
Nor do cases rest on single points of evidence. It's often said that circumstantial evidence isn't evidence, but it is. Often cases are built on many intersecting pieces of circumstantial evidence. Rarely do you have direct evidence of anything.
Nor is evidence isolated. If there's other people in the video, you can bring them in as witnesses. Together, a video and a witness testimony is stronger than either alone, since human memory is famously fallible.
I pay close attention to the state of the tech and I agree it’s pretty damn good these days. MiniMax H3 is a phenomenal model.
There are still limitations though… generation is time-consuming, even with the beefiest hardware it takes minutes to produce just a few seconds of video output at high-quality settings. There’s been a lot of innovation in reducing that time but it always comes with a substantial quality hit. My interest is in cinema-quality realism, 4K@30fps (minimum) with visual fidelity approaching live action. And that just isn’t happening yet.
For a lot of use cases, lower quality is fine. YouTube shorts like this one are meant for rapid consumption, and people expect lower resolution and compression artifacts. Most people aren’t going to linger on this, analyzing it for AI tells. They watch once and swipe to the next thing. Which is fine for a silly MMA clip but becomes really concerning when it’s news or political content. Because the format conditions people to consume and move on (and each video is contextually disconnected from those before and after it) we’re having our critical thinking skills trained out of us. Media literacy is in trouble.
If you do rewatch the Seamus O’Grady video, and I suppose if you know what you’re looking for, you can spot plenty of tells. Most are in the text. For example, the logos for “cypso.com” (crypto.com) and “IUC LIGO” (BUD LIGHT) on the floor make it pretty obviously fake.
I suspect that while there's gonna be some resistance for a period, we'll mostly just give in to AI video at some point. We'll be like "not me, never ever!" but one day there's gonna be that viral AI show everybody watches and talk about and that is genuinely good, you'll watch a bit get caught and that's it, the doors are opened. Not to sure what to think about it but I wouldn't bet too much money on this not happening, given the trajectory we're on. My only doubt is whether climate change and idiocrasy can still prevent that with a quick collapse, but I think it's gonna take longer.