Get the latest tech news
‘Cheapfake’ AI Celeb Videos Are Rage-Baiting People on YouTube
WIRED found over 100 YouTube channels using AI to create lazy fanfiction-style videos. Despite being obviously fake, there’s a psychological reason people are falling for them.
It entertains its audience simply with an AI voiceover, narrating an LLM written script laden with cliches as theatrical as “fist-clenching” and “jaw wobbling.” It’s cheap, lazy—the very definition of slop—but somehow, the channel it’s hosted on, Talk Show Gold, has managed to round up over 88,000 subscribers, many of whom express complete disbelief when eventually informed by other commenters that what they are watching is “fake news." A well-loved celebrity—usually an older male actor like Clint Eastwood, Denzel Washington, or Keanu Reeves—is poised as the hero, defending themselves against the villain, a left-leaning talk show host who steers the professional conversation into ad hominem. “We can share that some of our own family members and friends (particularly on the elderly side) have encountered videos like these and, though they were not completely persuaded, they did check in with us (knowing we are experts) for validity, as they were on the fence,” Ben Colman, cofounder and CEO of Reality Defender, tells WIRED.
Or read this on Wired
