WEBVTT - how to make money from fake AI videos 0:00:08.880 --> 0:00:12.799 The heartbreaking videos and images from the ongoing fires in 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:16.920 Los Angeles are filling up social media. A number of 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:20.600 them are claiming to show the iconic Hollywood Sign on 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:21.919 fire last night. 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:25.160 Earlier this year, a bunch of videos went viral showing 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:27.200 the Hollywood Sign on fire. 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:29.680 Literally like the Hollywood Sign, it was burning, it was 0:00:29.720 --> 0:00:32.720 burning yesterday, burning like what is going on? 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:34.120 It looked like the apocalypse. 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:38.360 They were posted in January when fires were raging across 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:42.479 LA where I live. This was a scary time and 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:44.680 those videos only made things worse. 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:48.640 These viral images that we see of the Hollywood Sign 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:52.400 on fire actually started to spread on social media as 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:54.920 Los Angeles in battles one of its worst fires in 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:55.920 all of its history. 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:59.080 There were different versions. Some of the videos just showed 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:01.840 fire on the hill low the letters, and in other 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:03.960 videos the letters themselves were burning. 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:06.560 When we saw the posts on Instagram, we were devastated. 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:09.440 We lived here all our lives and when we saw 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:12.000 that on Instagram, that broke our hearts. So we wanted 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:15.080 to come and see for as time, and we're really 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.000 shocked that the there's no fires, there's no fires, and 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:19.959 they're taking it basically. 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:24.199 So those videos were all fake. They were generated by AI. 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:26.640 If you saw these videos when they first came out, 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:29.640 maybe you already knew they were fake. But what you 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:32.560 might not know is how much money these videos can 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:35.600 make for their creators. And if the online course that 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:38.000 teaches you how to make these videos is to be believed, 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:42.160 you can make over five thousand dollars a month. Videos 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:44.800 like the Hollywood Sign burning are part of a bigger 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:48.080 phenomenon that is probably filling up your feed right now. 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:50.840 There's a word for this slap. 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:55.040 I actually don't know where it came from. Like I 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:57.720 had been calling it AI spam, I was writing about 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:02.440 it before it was called AI, and then someone on 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:05.400 Twitter I think, could just start calling it slop, and 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:08.120 I feel like slop is a better term for it. 0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:10.960 There's a lot of different types of AI slop at 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:14.240 this point, but basically it is an AI generated image 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:19.080 or video that is designed to go viral on social media. 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.959 Jason Kevler is my friend and former colleague from back 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:26.160 when we both worked advice. Since then, he co founded 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:28.720 a site called four or for Media, and pretty much 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:31.480 right out the gate this stuff turned into one of 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:34.280 his beats. You're one of the first people who was 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:38.880 really documenting AI slap before it really truly blew up. 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:41.560 Yeah, I mean I'm obsessed with it. I've been obsessed 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:44.160 with it since the get go. I've just found it 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:49.359 to be like very fascinating to cover because I can 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:54.040 kind of like watch in real time as people lose 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:56.239 touch with reality. To be honest with you. 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:00.160 I don't know if I'm quite as obsessed with with 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:03.240 this stuff as Jason is. But then again, he was 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:06.799 looking at golden Jesus helicopters and I'm here looking at 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:10.920 fake fires. But when I started investigating, I realized that 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:13.280 the stuff that he was seeing and the stuff that 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:16.000 I was watching, we're all part of the same machine. 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:18.520 And I managed to talk to one of the people 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:32.280 behind it. I'm afraid from Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:39.240 is kill Switch. I'm Dexter Thomas, I'm Chari. 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:02.880 Buy. 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:09.200 When did you start writing about AI slab? 0:04:10.280 --> 0:04:13.480 Yeah, it was December twenty twenty three. One of our 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:18.479 readers posted this image of a guy in the United 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:23.520 Kingdom who carves dogs out of wood like with a chainsaw, 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:28.240 and this reader had noticed that there were all these 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:35.160 copycats of this one guy's dog wood carvings. Basically, there 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:38.360 were these Facebook pages that were posting dozens and dozens 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:43.040 of different versions of the original photos that he was uploading. 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:46.040 And so in some images it's like the guy would 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:48.760 be would have a goatee. In some images, the guy 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:52.479 would look Latino. In some images, the guy would be 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:55.800 a woman. In some images, the dog would be a 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:58.640 German shepherd instead of like, you know, a Golden Retriever. 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:02.320 And it was very obvious that they had been modified 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:02.799 by AI. 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:06.720 This stuff sounds pretty innocuous, and I guess it was. 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:10.120 Back in twenty twenty three. Image to image generators like 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:14.159 Dolly and Microsoft's Being Image Generator were still kind of novel, 0:05:14.640 --> 0:05:17.400 and if someone wanted to use that to make variations 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:21.000 on existing images of chainsaw wood carvings, I mean, that's 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:24.320 not really my thing, but hey, if people are into it, whatever. 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:27.000 It was just kind of a. 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:30.440 Lot at first. This meant a lot of people were 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:35.520 using these aiimage generators and they were creating Facebook pages 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:39.320 and then posting I don't know, twenty thirty forty times 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:42.960 a day, and each page would have a theme. So 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:46.960 one of the themes would be like beautiful log cabins. 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:51.480 So a person would generate one hundred log cabins using 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:54.840 these aiimage generators and then they would post them on Facebook. 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:58.479 But his AI tools got better, and these Facebook pages 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:04.960 became more viral, the AI slap became more targeted and weirder. 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.440 The moment that this became really mainstream, in my opinion, 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:16.840 was this moment of shrimp Jesus and shrimp Jesus. Oh 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:21.000 we go right in Jesus, I mean, I think so. 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:23.240 So for a while, there were all of these images 0:06:23.240 --> 0:06:27.359 of Jesus, this sort of stereotypical white Jesus, long hair, 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:33.400 and people were just posting hundreds of images of Jesus 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:36.920 in different situations and then the caption would say please 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:39.320 give me an amen. They would be asking people to 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:41.880 comment on this, which would boost in the algorithm, and 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:43.960 none of it was real. It was all AI generated. 0:06:44.400 --> 0:06:47.440 There was a lot of images of Jesus sand sculptures, 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:51.040 and then the caption would be like only true believers 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:54.320 will love my art or something like that. And then 0:06:55.440 --> 0:07:02.520 there was this one image where Jesus was floating above 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:07.760 the ocean and he had the face of Jesus but 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:12.920 the arms of shrimp. It was basically like an iracnid 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:15.640 Jesus with like six arms and they were all made 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:18.680 of shrimp. And it was just like obviously insane, like 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:21.400 an insane image, something that a human I don't think 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:24.560 would probably ever think up on their own. And this 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:28.240 image had millions of likes on Facebook, and there were 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:30.680 a bunch of different versions of it. It just went 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:35.920 incredibly viral and weirdly, like a lot of the comments 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:39.720 were not even about the fact that Jesus was a shrimp. 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:44.200 It was just like, amen, I love God, things like that, 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:46.960 and so, I mean, I don't think people thought it 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:49.680 was real, but it clearly didn't matter to a lot 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:53.080 of people that this was just like an absurd image. 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:57.320 It sounds like shrimp Jesus was kind of the turning 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:02.160 point for Ais. I don't want to say the genesis necessarily, 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:04.040 I don't want to get too biblical with this, but 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:07.360 when I read your article on shrimp Jesus, I think 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:13.000 that is when I really truly realized, Okay, something really 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:14.600 really strange is happening here. 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:20.200 Yeah, it was very interesting that this was happening on Facebook. First, like, 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:23.880 Facebook is a really old social network at this point, 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:28.040 it's not cool anymore. Like, I don't know a lot 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:31.040 of people who use Facebook in the same way that 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:33.240 they might have in like two thousand and eight, and 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:36.280 the people that I do know who use it are 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:42.360 generally older and therefore, I mean, perhaps more susceptible to 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:46.720 fake AI images. And then I wrote that article, and 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:50.800 there was also some different meme accounts on Instagram and 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:56.760 on Twitter who took screenshots of shrimp Jesus, and they 0:08:56.800 --> 0:09:00.960 started saying Facebook is cooked. Facebook is became a meme 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:05.440 meaning look at what's happening over on Facebook. All the 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:10.240 old people are getting tricked into liking this absurd stuff. 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:16.720 And so that is a moment where AI slop escaped Facebook. 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:21.040 Shrimp Jesus went viral in April of twenty twenty four. 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:24.200 At the time, I remember thinking it was pretty funny. 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:27.280 I actually interviewed Jason about it and we basically spent 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:31.679 half an hour just laughing. But now, just a year later, 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:36.800 AI slap isn't only on Facebook tricking our parents. It's everywhere, 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:40.640 and it's not just bizarre or obviously fake stuff like 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:44.480 shrimp Jesus anymore. Some of those fake la fire videos 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:48.160 looked real, and they fooled a lot of people, so. 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:50.240 Which came right here just to check out the fires, 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:53.520 and there's nothing burnie in Hollywood. 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:56.440 The sign like you was shown on TV last night. 0:09:56.679 --> 0:10:00.280 You guys should help each other out instead of trying 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:05.280 to create false narratives and trying to promote bus, you know, 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:08.240 help help each other out. It's not it's not it's 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:08.640 not right. 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:13.520 This is the latest iteration of AI content, more realistic, 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:17.280 more targeted, and tied to real world events. 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:21.120 That's the scary thing about it, right, is that when 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:24.679 I first started writing about this, there was almost nothing 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:28.840 that was political or tied to the news in any way. 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:32.720 It was almost all like, look at this crazy food, 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:39.200 look at this amazing futuristic sci fi scenescape, look at 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:43.880 shrimp Jesus, look at this sand sculpture. And then what 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:48.920 has happened is the people making this stuff have realized 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:52.680 that they can get more attention if they start tying 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:54.320 it to the news in some way. 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:58.679 So one night, as the fires were still burning in La, 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:02.200 I opened up Instagram, and this was kind of everyone's 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:05.240 way of communicating, and it was also kind of a lifeline. 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:07.840 When you look at someone's stories, you never knew if 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:10.000 it was going to be them saying, hey, I'm okay, 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:12.040 I'm safe, or if it was going to be them 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:16.360 showing their house burning down. So I'm scrolling through and 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:18.680 I see this video of animals that are in a 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:23.400 burning forest and there's firefighters saving the baby animals. There's 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:27.160 a firefighter holding these two baby bear cubs and carrying 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:30.520 them out of the flames. Pretty quickly, I realized, wait 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:32.600 a second, this is fake. And then I look at 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:37.040 the view count. It's in the millions and there's thousands 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.920 of comments. I get curious and I look at the 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:46.480 username future rider US. That's kind of weird. So I 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:49.640 look at the post history, and most of the posts 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:54.439 were of these AI motorcycles that were riding through futuristic landscapes, 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:58.280 so the name makes sense for those. But I scroll 0:11:58.400 --> 0:12:00.319 up and I see that as soon who as the 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:04.640 fire started, they posted a fake Hollywood sign burning video 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:07.800 that got them a million views, and that was their 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:11.560 biggest success to that point, and they just kept posting 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:12.800 fire content after that. 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:16.560 The thing that's happened alongside of that is the AI 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:18.760 has gotten a lot better. The AI has gotten a 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:19.800 lot more convincing. 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:22.560 I said, I was able to tell this it's fake, 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:26.079 but it took me a second. And the comments are 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:29.600 kind of mixed. There's some people who are completely unaware 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:32.000 that this stuff is fake and saying things like, Wow, 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:34.679 look at these brave firefighters. I'm so glad they're helping 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:38.800 the animals. But there's other people who are posting angry 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:42.640 comments like how dare you make fake content about this disaster? 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:46.600 And so now you have a lot of people who 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:50.680 are making stuff that is designed to hit the news 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:55.800 cycle in some way, to upset people, to enrage people, 0:12:56.760 --> 0:13:00.280 or to trick them. It's not just on face Book. 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:03.440 It's on YouTube, it's on TikTok, It's on Instagram. You know, 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:06.880 I've even seen it on Pinterest and LinkedIn. So it's 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:09.839 really become a strategy for people who want to make 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:11.320 money on the internet at this point. 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:16.960 Yeah, it's weird because it seemed like everything trickled down 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:20.200 to Facebook in the past few years. Good features from 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:23.600 somewhere else eventually make it over to Facebook. Information that 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:27.000 first happens on Twitter, because it's really real time, eventually 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:30.240 makes it over to Facebook. It's not like this really 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:34.120 weird thing that has started on Facebook is spread out 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:35.480 to the rest of the world. 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:38.720 It's the first time Facebook's irrelevant in like a decade. 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:42.960 This is the innovation that's happening on Facebook. No joke. 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:47.080 Yeah is aislab. But when was it that you first 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:51.800 started seeing stuff that was realistic and was directly tied 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:54.520 to actual events that were happening in the real world. 0:13:55.720 --> 0:14:00.520 There was this moment where in Israel's invasion of Gaza, 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:05.480 there was that moment where they went into Rafa and 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:10.320 there was an AI generated image called all Eyes on Rafa. 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:12.120 Can you describe the image? 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:16.560 Yeah, So it was huge font and it said all 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:21.760 eyes on Rafa. There was like a bunch of tents 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.600 and what looked to be like a refugee camp. And 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:33.400 this was shared like tens of millions of times on Instagram. 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:35.680 A lot of celebrities shared it. There was a bunch 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:39.040 of people writing about it. So I started looking for 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:43.640 where it came from, and I found this group on 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:50.320 Facebook for AI creators in Malaysia and they were testing 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:55.080 all of these different versions of AI generated images about 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:59.280 the war in Gaza, and the all Eyes on Rafa 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:03.840 image came from that Facebook group. So that was the 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:08.320 first time that I ever saw AI spam intersect directly 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:11.760 with the news, and it was interesting because in that 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:14.600 group they were talking about the all eyes on Rafa 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:19.480 image and how viral it went, and we're like, maybe 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:22.320 we can reverse engineer this, maybe we can do this 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:26.040 over and over and over again. A month after that, 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:29.640 I figured out how people were making money with these 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.680 images and why and the whole strategy behind it. 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.480 Who's behind these posts and how do they make money. 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:50.480 We'll get into that after the break. One of the 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:53.720 disconnects that I've been seeing just in my own reporting 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:59.560 is that I think there is an awareness growing among 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:04.040 some people that AI generated images are a thing, and 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:08.880 that it's not always obvious if something is AI. But 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:12.880 I think a lot of people don't necessarily realize why 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.880 this is being made, what motivation there might be. 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:20.160 For a very long time. I and also the experts 0:16:20.200 --> 0:16:22.440 that I spoke to, One thing that we couldn't figure 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:25.120 out was like, why are they doing this? Like what 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:29.040 is the scam here? Because there was no obvious way 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:32.400 that it was being monetized. For months, I thought that 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:35.760 people were doing this and trying to make money off 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:38.360 of Facebook's platform in some way. I thought they were 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:40.360 trying to hack people I thought they were trying to 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:43.400 push them off the website to steal their credit card 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:47.000 information or something like that. But all along they were 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:51.480 just getting paid directly by Facebook because these images were 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:52.240 going viral. 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:57.680 These creators don't need to scam anybody. Having a viral 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:00.200 video is enough to make a lot of money. 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:05.400 Facebook has this thing called the Creator Bonus Program, and 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:10.679 it basically pays people a sliver of ad revenue for 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:12.840 posts that get engagement. 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:18.080 How much money can you make? Meta doesn't publish those numbers, 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:21.560 but I asked a few influencers and recently the rate 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:23.639 seemed to be around one hundred to one hundred and 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:25.200 twenty dollars per million views. 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:28.399 It's become a job to be totally honest with you. 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:32.480 It's pretty crazy because there's there's like this one example 0:17:33.880 --> 0:17:39.080 of a guy who quit his job in India. He 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:41.560 was like working in the medical industry and he wasn't 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:43.760 making a lot of money and he was supporting his 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:46.399 family and he was like, I used to work like 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:51.440 sixteen hour days and then I learned about spamming Facebook. 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:56.280 And he posted this one image that was a train 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:59.920 made out of leaves. It's like just to passenger train, 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:02.679 but the train was made entirely out of leaves. It 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:05.639 was an AI image and he made four hundred dollars 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:10.000 from that image. And he was like, I was only 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:14.560 making two hundred dollars a month at my other job. Wow, 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:17.119 And so I just do this now. 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:22.280 Wow. And there's the incentive. You can make pretty serious 0:18:22.320 --> 0:18:25.760 money here, which brings us back to future writer us. 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:29.400 It's not really possible to know exactly how much money 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:32.040 they're making, but if we go back to that estimate 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:35.119 of about one hundred bucks per million views, let's compare 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:38.639 that to their most successful day. In a roughly twenty 0:18:38.680 --> 0:18:42.240 four hour stretch, starting on January tenth, they posted seven 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:47.560 videos which collectively got about ninety four million views. Theoretically, 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:51.760 that could work out to nine thousand, four hundred dollars 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:54.679 in one day. And that's not the only way the 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:57.719 account makes money. They also sell a guide so that 0:18:57.760 --> 0:19:00.960 you yourself can start your own AI slaw business for 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:02.440 just nineteen ninety nine. 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:07.280 Want to grow your Instagram TikTok YouTube fast, get thousands 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:11.760 of followers, create viral reels, and earn five thousand dollars 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:15.800 plus every month with the Viral Reels Guide it's easier 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:20.480 than ever. Step by step instructions, proven strategies, the perfect 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:24.199 for beginners, no experience needed, Ready to start. Grab the 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:28.000 guide today for just nineteen dollars and ninety nine cents. 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:32.280 This is a key part of the new AI slop economy. 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:37.920 So there is this entire network of influencers. Almost all 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:44.199 of them are in India, Vietnam, Pakistan, a couple in 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:48.040 a few African countries and Central America, but for the 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:52.879 most part they are in developing countries who have YouTube channels, 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:56.800 who are like, here is how you can make AI spam, 0:19:57.160 --> 0:19:59.520 and here's how to put it on Facebook, and here's 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:00.640 how to mind to ties it. 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:04.240 So as I went further down this Future writer us 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:07.479 rabbit hole, I got so curious that I realized I 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:09.560 needed to know what was in this course they were selling, 0:20:10.400 --> 0:20:15.000 So for journalism's sake, I bought it. It's a ZIP 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:18.880 file with two files. The first one is this really 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:22.960 short PDF which is pretty clearly chat GBT generated, and 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:26.640 the summary of it is it basically gives you these instructions. 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:30.679 First look online for what's already trending at the moment. Second, 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:33.720 type that into Sora dot Ai to generate a video 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:37.840 about that thing, add some music, and three posts a 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:41.080 video online. Then just repeat that multiple times a day. 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:44.720 The second file is just a seven minute iPhone screen 0:20:44.760 --> 0:20:48.560 recording of them generating a prompt and then uploading that online. 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:52.680 It's like almost like a pyramid scheme where it's like, well, well, 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:54.840 this one person made a lot of money and here's 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:57.280 a guide to doing it, so I'm gonna try as well. 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:00.280 You just have like tens of thousands of people who 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:03.359 are trying this, and the end result is the entire 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:04.560 platform gets spammed. 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:08.520 So who's the audience for this stuff? 0:21:09.080 --> 0:21:12.600 I mean, there's definitely some strategic thinking about will people 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:16.120 in the United States, the United Kingdom or Canada care 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:18.960 about this stuff? That's the strategy. And I know that's 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:21.360 the strategy because a lot of the videos about how 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:24.920 to make this stuff talk about here's what people in 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:27.320 the United States care about. Like I watched one video 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:31.680 that basically was like Americans love babies and they love pets, 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:35.960 and so make AI images about babies and pets. I've 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:39.320 seen guides that are like, here's what you need to 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:43.119 know about Jesus because you may be Hindu and you 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:47.240 don't know so like, if you're making AI spam about Jesus, 0:21:47.359 --> 0:21:49.880 here are words to type in that will get you Jesus. 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:54.800 Because a lot of Americans are Christian. You want people 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:56.960 in the United States and Canada to look at these 0:21:57.040 --> 0:22:00.439 because the way that online advertising works is if you 0:22:00.520 --> 0:22:05.600 are in a richer country, the ad rates are higher, 0:22:06.160 --> 0:22:10.000 page views from developed countries. 0:22:09.680 --> 0:22:11.359 Are worth more. 0:22:11.920 --> 0:22:16.679 Yeah, but I think the audience is an algorithm. I 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:21.280 think that the audience is like what what works well 0:22:21.440 --> 0:22:27.440 in the algorithm, because the goal is not to create 0:22:28.080 --> 0:22:32.800 an amazing image or an amazing video that people are 0:22:32.800 --> 0:22:36.760 going to resonate with. The goal is to make people 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:41.399 linger on any given image or video long enough to 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:44.920 send a signal to the algorithm that this is something 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:48.000 that a human being spent time looking at, spend time 0:22:48.000 --> 0:22:51.880 engaging with. You know, if it's something totally absurd, you're 0:22:51.880 --> 0:22:54.280 going to get people in the comment saying, hey, this 0:22:54.359 --> 0:22:56.680 isn't real, and then you're going to have fights back 0:22:56.680 --> 0:22:59.560 and forth, and all of those signals send to the 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:03.639 algorithm that this is something that's worth surfacing in someone 0:23:03.640 --> 0:23:07.560 else's feed. And so I really don't think that the 0:23:07.640 --> 0:23:11.040 audience for this is real human beings. 0:23:13.200 --> 0:23:14.960 You might have heard that last bit and thought of 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:18.560 something called the dead Internet theory. It's well, you could 0:23:18.640 --> 0:23:21.560 kind of call it a conspiracy theory, but basically it 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:24.280 refers to the idea that the Internet has so many 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:29.280 bots and algorithmically generated content that human interaction is actually 0:23:29.280 --> 0:23:33.200 a minority of the traffic online. The majority of traffic 0:23:33.400 --> 0:23:35.879 is just bots spamming each other back and forth. 0:23:36.320 --> 0:23:38.240 And the way that you would apply this to say, 0:23:38.840 --> 0:23:44.159 shrimp Jesus, for example, is like, well, there's a bot 0:23:44.280 --> 0:23:48.320 that posted this AI image, and then maybe all the 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:50.600 people liking at our bots, and maybe all the people 0:23:50.600 --> 0:23:54.879 commenting on it our bots, and therefore none of it 0:23:54.920 --> 0:23:55.320 is real. 0:23:56.119 --> 0:23:58.879 But Jason has a slightly different theory. 0:23:58.960 --> 0:24:02.160 I think that's too reductive. I just I don't think 0:24:02.200 --> 0:24:05.240 that that's what's happening, and I know that's not what's happening, 0:24:05.359 --> 0:24:10.200 because there are human beings in the loop. I'm certain 0:24:10.240 --> 0:24:14.480 of it. Like they're human beings who are prompting these 0:24:14.800 --> 0:24:18.119 AI images and are posting them. They may not be 0:24:18.240 --> 0:24:21.600 monitoring the accounts very closely, but they're making it and 0:24:21.600 --> 0:24:25.920 they're posting these images. And then there are definitely bots 0:24:26.720 --> 0:24:31.560 who are liking and commenting on some of these images. 0:24:32.400 --> 0:24:36.280 But these images and these photos and these you know, 0:24:36.440 --> 0:24:40.320 videos are showing up in people's feeds. So I've called 0:24:40.400 --> 0:24:43.359 the zombie Internet, where it's like a mix of human 0:24:43.400 --> 0:24:47.080 beings and bots, where you have human beings arguing in 0:24:47.119 --> 0:24:49.240 the comments with bots. You have human beings in the 0:24:49.240 --> 0:24:51.879 comments arguing with other human beings. You have bots in 0:24:51.920 --> 0:24:54.960 the comments arguing with other bots. And it's to me, 0:24:55.080 --> 0:24:58.760 that's even worse than dead Internet, where everyone is a bot, 0:24:59.320 --> 0:25:04.840 because you have all of these real humans who can't 0:25:04.880 --> 0:25:09.760 tell that they're commenting on an AI generated image and 0:25:09.800 --> 0:25:15.159