Speaker 1: Class. Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Kara Price. Today's interview
Speaker 1: is all about Sora, the video generation tool and invite
Speaker 1: only social media app that Open Ai released at the
Speaker 1: beginning of October. If you're on TikTok, Instagram, or x
Speaker 1: you've likely seen videos made by Sora plastered all over
Speaker 1: your feeds. These videos ranged from the absurd cats dancing
Speaker 1: by a dumpster with sunglasses on to hyper realistic like
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth trying jerk chicken in Jamaica. When I first
Speaker 1: saw these videos, I was entertained by the absurdist ones
Speaker 1: and kind of floored by the realistic ones. To me,
Speaker 1: Sora signals that we have officially entered the post bunny
Speaker 1: trampoline internet. Yeah, I'm talking about the AI video of
Speaker 1: the Horde of Bunnies jumping on a trampoline in the dark.
Speaker 1: I was very convinced that this video was real, and
Speaker 1: so were many people, which led to a mini panic.
Speaker 1: Is it even possible to detect what's fake and what's
Speaker 1: not anymore? That's where my guest today comes in. His
Speaker 1: name is Jeremy Carrasco and he runs multiple social media
Speaker 1: accounts under the name show Tools AI.
Speaker 2: The idea that we can't tell what's real or not
Speaker 2: because of AI video is so far definitely.
Speaker 1: Not the case. He has only been a full time
Speaker 1: creator for four months, but he has become a trusted
Speaker 1: source for dissecting viral AI videos and explaining the tells.
Speaker 2: There is a physical truth to shooting a video with
Speaker 2: a camera. That physical truth isn't going away, and AI
Speaker 2: does a version that to our eyes look like that
Speaker 2: physical truth. But upon examination you can figure out that
Speaker 2: these things break down. And I do think that any
Speaker 2: normal person with decent eyesight can zoom into these AI
Speaker 2: videos and figure that out.
Speaker 1: So Jeremy wants his social videos to be education. He
Speaker 1: wants more people to get excited by what he calls
Speaker 1: pixel peeping, and he wants to improve people's media literacy
Speaker 1: and hopes his accounts can help people tune their AI
Speaker 1: vibe checker.
Speaker 2: I'm not naive to the fact that people aren't going
Speaker 2: to be pixel peeping on the videos that they watch,
Speaker 2: So it's just about trying to tune people's initial impressions
Speaker 2: so that they have something in their head that says ey,
Speaker 2: something might not be right here, and then they can use,
Speaker 2: hopefully other media skills that I teach them. In order
Speaker 2: to dive a little.
Speaker 1: Bit deeper, I talk to Jeremy about so many things,
Speaker 1: how video generation tools work, how to pick up on AI, tells,
Speaker 1: why Sora is an inflection point for the Internet, and
Speaker 1: what this signals for the future of social media. I
Speaker 1: started out by asking Jeremy to clarify what Sora is
Speaker 1: and what it does.
Speaker 2: So. Sora was originally released as Openay's first video model
Speaker 2: in October twenty twenty five. They reuse the Sora name
Speaker 2: to launch their social media app. A lot of the
Speaker 2: hype has been around a Sora app, which is currently
Speaker 2: invite only, and then there's the Sora TOI model that
Speaker 2: you can already access if you have API access or
Speaker 2: if you're a developer or even a normal person. There
Speaker 2: are tools that let you generate a video with the
Speaker 2: Sora to video model without an invite. The Sora app
Speaker 2: experience is very unique in some ways and very familiar
Speaker 2: in others. It does feel like a TikTok for you
Speaker 2: page just for AI videos. You can scroll, it has
Speaker 2: an algorithm to suggest But what's gotten a lot of
Speaker 2: the tension is the ability to cameo someone, but really,
Speaker 2: these are just deep bakes. Like you're creating deep fakes
Speaker 2: of your friends. You're creating deep bakes of whoever lets
Speaker 2: you create a deep bake of them, And you have
Speaker 2: different levels of permissions. So, for example, Jake Paul and
Speaker 2: Sam Altman let anyone deep fake them, whereas I let
Speaker 2: no one deep fake me because I'm not comfortable with that.
Speaker 1: What does it look like to let someone deep fake
Speaker 1: you on Sora?
Speaker 2: It looks like a version of you doing whatever they
Speaker 2: prompted you to do. Now, there are safety features in place,
Speaker 2: so you can't have them do anything violent, you can't
Speaker 2: do anything sexual. But it's really up to open a
Speaker 2: high to set those boundaries. And I don't think it's
Speaker 2: completely accurate. I've made versions of myself that I think
Speaker 2: don't look very much like me. I've made other versions
Speaker 2: of myself that look a lot like me. That's really
Speaker 2: up to luck, because as we'll learn, these models aren't deterministic.
Speaker 2: There's a part of this that is random, so it's
Speaker 2: not repeatable. So Jake Paul is a very good example.
Speaker 2: There are a ton of AI videos of Jake Paul
Speaker 2: right now. All of them look a little bit different,
Speaker 2: but have his likeness, so you have to give permission
Speaker 2: for someone to make a video of you through the
Speaker 2: cameo feature.
Speaker 1: So would you say that AI video generation scares you, Like,
Speaker 1: is it something that keeps you up at night?
Speaker 2: It's not because I'm doing something about it now, but
Speaker 2: it really was, and I think it is keeping people
Speaker 2: up at night because so much of our time is
Speaker 2: spent on these short form video platforms like for better
Speaker 2: or worse. I do think that it is the primary
Speaker 2: way that people get information now. There was probably never
Speaker 2: the best format for that information in the first place,
Speaker 2: but here we are. So I think what keeps me
Speaker 2: up is really general media literacy skills, and I think
Speaker 2: of AI video as an extension of that. A lot
Speaker 2: of people are kept up by what I think are
Speaker 2: irrational fears about AI video, Like, in my opinion, it's
Speaker 2: probably not going to be framing you for a crime
Speaker 2: anytime soon, but it might turn the core of public
Speaker 2: opinion against you. It might be spreading disinformation.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 2: It's an extension of other media literacy problems, and it's
Speaker 2: a very believable one because people when they are scrolling,
Speaker 2: they're just there to tune out and scroll. They're not
Speaker 2: there to pixel peep and really pay attention, right, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, you don't think that we are living in a
Speaker 1: world where soon people could be framed for something they
Speaker 1: didn't do using manipulated video.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that. I'm not a lawyer, but I've
Speaker 2: done some looking into this, and the reality is that
Speaker 2: in order for something to be admitted into evidence, at
Speaker 2: least in the United States, it has to have an
Speaker 2: extensive metadata trail. It has to be authenticated. You have
Speaker 2: to get the person who filmed the video into the
Speaker 2: courtroom to say that they filmed it. And we have
Speaker 2: to understand that while our perception might be getting tricked,
Speaker 2: there are procedural and mathematical ways that these can be detected.
Speaker 2: So it is not undetectable yet. And anyone who says
Speaker 2: it's undetectable is probably either selling you something or doesn't
Speaker 2: have a good eye. And anyone who says it will
Speaker 2: be undetectable does not know that, and frankly doesn't understand
Speaker 2: the technology that's making these AI videos very well.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, and right now, your likeness is not shared.
Speaker 2: No, I have a strong, strong bias against this because
Speaker 2: I believe that once your likeness gets out there and
Speaker 2: is deepfakable, so to speak. It's really hard to pull
Speaker 2: that back, not because you can't, like you can tell
Speaker 2: people to stop, but once it's out there, I think
Speaker 2: you lose a sense of trust. It's a line that
Speaker 2: I just don't want to cross. I'm not comfortable crossing,
Speaker 2: and I've actually told my followers I will never cross
Speaker 2: that line because it's just not what I'm interested in.
Speaker 1: So I was hoping that you could show me how
Speaker 1: to make a video using the Sora app.
Speaker 2: Sure, so this is the Sora desktop app. It is
Speaker 2: not the vertical experience that you have, you know, on
Speaker 2: the phone. It is, however, showing a lot of the
Speaker 2: same content. So this is essentially the for you page
Speaker 2: of Sora. And the thing to note here is that
Speaker 2: there are Sora water marks over each one of these videos.
Speaker 2: In the mobile experience, those water marks go away, but
Speaker 2: they don't let you screen record in the mobile version,
Speaker 2: Whereas theoretically anyone could do what I'm doing right now,
Speaker 2: like I can share my screen here, I could record
Speaker 2: my screen. When you see Sora videos on social media,
Speaker 2: this is how they're being made.
Speaker 1: So let's try to make a Sora video. Let's do
Speaker 1: skiing with candy.
Speaker 2: Skiing with Candy. You want me to just say that
Speaker 2: and see what it comes up with. Yes, let's do it.
Speaker 2: I think that's a great idea.
Speaker 1: Why do you think it's a good idea?
Speaker 2: Because so something that people aren't talking enough about with
Speaker 2: Sora is that you can have a very simple prompt
Speaker 2: and it can come up with something really creative. That's
Speaker 2: really what, in my opinion, distinguishes it from other video models.
Speaker 2: Google vo three was how a lot of AI content
Speaker 2: was made a few weeks ago. If you don't give
Speaker 2: Google vo three a good prompt, it's just boring, Whereas
Speaker 2: Sora will go through some attempts to at least make
Speaker 2: it entertaining anyway.
Speaker 1: It's just incredible to me that in a given three
Speaker 1: weeks the world sort of changes.
Speaker 2: I think that there is a misconception that the world
Speaker 2: just changed because video AI made a huge, undetectable leap.
Speaker 2: It did make a step towards more realism. What soa
Speaker 2: to really improved. Where a lot of the human parts
Speaker 2: of video AI, such as hand movement or if they
Speaker 2: have a missing limb, or if their teeth look weird,
Speaker 2: or if their eyes look uncanny, hair like, there were
Speaker 2: all these little things that people would pick on again,
Speaker 2: a lot of them subconscious. Sura made a step towards
Speaker 2: improving those things. It still has a lot of background issues.
Speaker 2: It is actually a noisier or muddier looking model in
Speaker 2: my opinion than video, but a lot of people aren't
Speaker 2: looking for that. A lot of the videos that go
Speaker 2: viral that are AI generated are security cams, our body
Speaker 2: cams are go pro looking cameras, things that people aren't
Speaker 2: looking at every day. But it really made improvements in
Speaker 2: how good the outputs are to watch. Like story wise,
Speaker 2: if you were to release Google vo three as a
Speaker 2: social media app, it would fail just entirely because people
Speaker 2: would get on there and unless you're a good prompter, like,
Speaker 2: you're not going to come up with anything interesting. As
Speaker 2: Sah made anyone getting into AI, it's possible for you
Speaker 2: to come up with something interesting with a very basic prompt.
Speaker 2: That's a really, really big innovation that they didn't talk about.
Speaker 2: But I think that's why it's had such an impact
Speaker 2: is because there's a huge volume of somewhat meaningful Sora
Speaker 2: videos out there, whereas there really wasn't with VEO when
Speaker 2: that came out right. So all right, so it came
Speaker 2: up with skiing with candy. Let's see what Let's see
Speaker 2: what I did here?
Speaker 1: Look what.
Speaker 2: Go mid slip snack classy and.
Speaker 3: A peppermint for the wind.
Speaker 1: Nothing like sweet feel to keep the turn smooth? Catch
Speaker 1: you at the bottom.
Speaker 2: All right? What are your impressions?
Speaker 1: I just don't I'm sorry, this is Is it okay
Speaker 1: that this is blowing my mind?
Speaker 2: It should okay?
Speaker 1: Good, it should blow your mind because I feel daft,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like I can't wrap my head around this,
Speaker 1: Like I'm assuming this woman in the video with her
Speaker 1: ski mask on is not a real person.
Speaker 2: No, she's not a real person. And we don't know
Speaker 2: how they invented her. They just came up with that.
Speaker 3: What so.
Speaker 2: So there are things about this that stick out to
Speaker 2: me as obvious AI video. And then there are things
Speaker 2: about this that I just have to say, wow, that
Speaker 2: is incredible. So if I can just explain what I
Speaker 2: see here someone who watches these, so please. She starts
Speaker 2: out by skiing down the hill, but she's kind of
Speaker 2: skiing like it's snowboarding. Then she stops. She has some
Speaker 2: peppermints in her hand, she has some bags of candy
Speaker 2: in her hand, and there are some weird things going
Speaker 2: on here. But what it did with it is without
Speaker 2: any input, it basically made a social media video with it.
Speaker 2: It's like she's promoting this candy. There's someone responding to
Speaker 2: her in the background. It invented a straw for her exactly.
Speaker 2: It she talks like an influencer.
Speaker 1: I just it really trips me up that she's not
Speaker 1: a real person, that this person does not exist in
Speaker 1: the world. It's really weird.
Speaker 2: Same. I mean, I have to tell myself it's not
Speaker 2: a real person.
Speaker 1: I mean, it would be like if you didn't exist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's That's the thing is, it's visually feels the
Speaker 2: same as talking to another person online. Of course, there
Speaker 2: are there are tells, so I'll get into those. So
Speaker 2: first of all, you have just the context. Why is
Speaker 2: she skiing down the hill with a bag of candy
Speaker 2: and why is she just putting it in her mouth
Speaker 2: with the wrappers. Then there are some artifacts that I
Speaker 2: can see, especially at the beginning of the generation. Her
Speaker 2: jacket and her pants are incredibly pixelated when it starts.
Speaker 2: But the other thing here is that it's very noisy.
Speaker 2: If we actually zoom in there's a lot of artifacts
Speaker 2: in the mountains back there.
Speaker 1: It is weird how she's eating the candy. That's a
Speaker 1: little uncanny.
Speaker 2: It's weird. Yeah, she's eating raft candy and the bag
Speaker 2: there just stuck to her knee. Yeah, you know, so
Speaker 2: at first it's a ziplock bag, then it's not a
Speaker 2: ziplock bag, then it sticks to her knee. Her feet
Speaker 2: are backwards, like her foot there is literally backwards in
Speaker 2: this version. She doesn't have a foot like you know,
Speaker 2: you get into it. It's kind of funny.
Speaker 1: But this is why you have such a large platfor
Speaker 1: because like I look at this at first and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's perfect. Like in a way, if I see the
Speaker 1: trappings of what I think i'm seeing, I don't really
Speaker 1: look for the detail that's wrong.
Speaker 2: Especially when you're just scrolling on TikTok or Instagram. You're
Speaker 2: not looking for.
Speaker 1: Anything wrong, right, which is how they want you to
Speaker 1: look at it, or scrolling on Sora.
Speaker 2: Or scrolling on Sora. A lot of them are leaving
Speaker 2: Sara and making it out to all these platforms. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're not going to be looking for these things. I'm
Speaker 2: totally aware of that. I mean, on first watch, are
Speaker 2: you gonna pick out everything that's wrong with this? No,
Speaker 2: But if you watch it five times and start zooming in,
Speaker 2: you're gonna start noticing that her feet are literally backwards.
Speaker 2: So yeah, when it comes down to it, I think
Speaker 2: what's really very important about Sora is that it did
Speaker 2: all that work for you. You didn't need to know
Speaker 2: how to prompt the video. AI. If you were to
Speaker 2: put skiing with candy into Google video, it's just going
Speaker 2: to be boring. I'll just tell you that right now.
Speaker 1: So if I wanted this video, this exact video, for three,
Speaker 1: what would I have to prompt it to do?
Speaker 2: You'd have to act like a camera director. You'd have
Speaker 2: to say, video starting with women skiing down the slope.
Speaker 2: She is wearing a pink and yellow top, a turquoise bottom,
Speaker 2: She's holding a bag of candy in her right hand,
Speaker 2: pepperminster her left hand, and you'd have to go shot
Speaker 2: by shot to give it. I can actually show you
Speaker 2: something that I came up with that more clearly demonstrates
Speaker 2: this point. So this is a video I made yesterday
Speaker 2: with the prompt epic anime of Diego Maradonna scoring a
Speaker 2: goal in the world cup, weaving.
Speaker 1: Past one, still going two. Defender's beaten. He won't announcers.
Speaker 2: This is him dribbling through an entire defense. It is
Speaker 2: an epic looking anime. Anime. People would say it doesn't
Speaker 2: look great, but normal people probably wouldn't notice it. And
Speaker 2: what blew me away about this is that it created
Speaker 2: Diego Maradonna's most famous goal and it added the announcers.
Speaker 2: I didn't tell it to do any of that. Now,
Speaker 2: if I compare that to what Google Vio did with
Speaker 2: the exact same prompt it did this, this.
Speaker 1: One is b team.
Speaker 2: It is. The quality of the video is actually better,
Speaker 2: but it didn't make it interesting. So again, that's why
Speaker 2: you're seeing so much, Sarah, as you don't need to
Speaker 2: be very creative.
Speaker 1: What are the implications of a social media app being
Speaker 1: designed and housing videos full of fake people? Like it's
Speaker 1: just crazy to me that I can watch a video
Speaker 1: of someone who doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: I think that we don't know the implications, and I
Speaker 2: would push back on it being like our inevitable future
Speaker 2: a bit, but I would say that it is normalizing
Speaker 2: deep faking, and I don't think we know what that
Speaker 2: will mean for us. But I don't think it'll be good.
Speaker 2: I think it might be entertaining, I think it might
Speaker 2: be interesting. It is certainly a technical achievement, but I
Speaker 2: don't consider it to be a technological advancement. I'm not
Speaker 2: so sure it is progress. But it is a pretty
Speaker 2: incredible thing that they've been able to pull off, and
Speaker 2: I think that it is rational for people to look
Speaker 2: at these videos and be pretty freaked out. And that's
Speaker 2: what a lot of my comments are because what isn't
Speaker 2: clear is how this is going to improve social media
Speaker 2: in anyway, to improve our media literacy skills in any way.
Speaker 2: There are definitely tech advancements here that can improve advancements
Speaker 2: towards artificial general intelligence, like there are technical reasons that
Speaker 2: this could be helpful in the future. But the step
Speaker 2: that open Aye took to release this in a social
Speaker 2: media app was a huge jump, in my opinion, in
Speaker 2: the wrong direction. But the technology is here to stay
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 1: After the break, will we become desensitized to deep fakes?
Speaker 3: Stay with us?
Speaker 1: One thing that I can't really get over about sore
Speaker 1: Too is that Sam Altman is letting anybody use his likeness.
Speaker 1: He opened his likeness to any sor user, so I
Speaker 1: could say Sam Altman building a snowman for example, why
Speaker 1: do this, Like, as the head of the company.
Speaker 2: I can only guess. I think that it is generally
Speaker 2: just attempt at normalizing deep baking people, and I think
Speaker 2: people should be really scared of crossing that line. I
Speaker 2: think it's a serious thing to do, and I think
Speaker 2: open pushing everyone in that direction before anyone was even
Speaker 2: asking for it is really frightening. You could create deep
Speaker 2: fakes of people before there was the technology to do it.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of friction and social pressure not
Speaker 2: to do it. That friction was helpful in keeping our
Speaker 2: information economy healthy. Even with safety features on the Sora
Speaker 2: app of like letting letting you set permissions, people are
Speaker 2: gonna mess that up. People won't know that they can
Speaker 2: be deepfaked, and of course that's their responsibility to know.
Speaker 2: But you've just opened up an entire can of worms.
Speaker 2: There are other issues here, like currently you can't delete
Speaker 2: your Sora account without deleting your entire JATGPT account.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And again like you can't pull this back, Like in
Speaker 2: theory you could stop people. But if you are a
Speaker 2: public figure and you open up this can of worms,
Speaker 2: it could really backfire. So it's Sora accelerating this deep
Speaker 2: fake idea into a space that just hasn't been that
Speaker 2: full explored yet. And I don't think i'd want to
Speaker 2: be inly adopter of this because there's a lot of negative,
Speaker 2: like downside risk that I just don't think we figured
Speaker 2: out yet.
Speaker 1: So you have a video where you talk about how
Speaker 1: SOA is actually costing open Ai about one dollar per post?
Speaker 1: Can you explain that calculation and what it means for
Speaker 1: Sora long term?
Speaker 2: This was an educated guest that ended up being right.
Speaker 2: Every video you create is basically on open AI's dime. So,
Speaker 2: for example, two weeks ago, if I, as a creator
Speaker 2: wanted to post an Ai video to TikTok or Instagram,
Speaker 2: I would have to pay a subscription to make that
Speaker 2: video and download it or pay per post. So there
Speaker 2: are commodity prices for these video models. For Google vo
Speaker 2: it's a dollar fifty to three dollars. Sora is currently
Speaker 2: around a dollar. But the Sora application is free, and
Speaker 2: anytime you create an Ai video on that it is
Speaker 2: free to you. So as always I would ask the question,
Speaker 2: if it is free, are you the product? And I'm
Speaker 2: this case they are taking your data, they're taking your
Speaker 2: face scans, they're taking your props. Right, so there's that
Speaker 2: question of why are they doing this? Of course they're
Speaker 2: also doing it to get users. But imagine you were
Speaker 2: TikTok or Instagram and every single time someone posted a
Speaker 2: video on your site you needed to pay a dollar.
Speaker 2: How quickly is that going to add up? For Sora?
Speaker 1: Very quickly?
Speaker 2: Would advertisers be able to make up that difference? Are
Speaker 2: you going to need subscribers to help make up with
Speaker 2: that difference? I mean, video takes a ton of compute.
Speaker 2: It is costing them GPU compute, it is costing them
Speaker 2: opportunity costs. The GPUs could be used for other things, right,
Speaker 2: So the fact that they chose a video social media
Speaker 2: app where every time someone posts on your platform it's
Speaker 2: costing you money is pretty confusing to me as someone
Speaker 2: who understands that those advertiser clicks are not even close
Speaker 2: to worth that much.
Speaker 1: My question is, is your sam Altman, you oversee the
Speaker 1: most popular or AI tool on the market, Why are
Speaker 1: you going into social media?
Speaker 2: You're asking the right question that I think even open
Speaker 2: AI's own employees are asking. There has been some reporting
Speaker 2: on even open AI people being confused by this. At
Speaker 2: the end of the day, TikTok is releasing an AI generator,
Speaker 2: I get ads for that all the time. YouTube is
Speaker 2: putting Google vo three into YouTube shorts. Everyone's looking at
Speaker 2: this as how do we build like the AI video feed?
Speaker 2: And it appears to me the rationale would be to
Speaker 2: generate some sort of advertiser revenue. I think that would
Speaker 2: be the simple answer. But whether or not that actually
Speaker 2: works is a huge open question.
Speaker 1: So in the future, say, Sora, the app is running
Speaker 1: ads between videos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely interesting.
Speaker 1: So in one of your videos, you say that AI
Speaker 1: will end social media? What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: I think it has the potential to end the four
Speaker 2: you page as we know it, unless the social media
Speaker 2: companies figure out a way to filter AI content. Again,
Speaker 2: we do not know how people are going to react
Speaker 2: to this when it's deployed much wider. But it is
Speaker 2: a rational thing to not want to only see AI
Speaker 2: slop in your feed. And I say AI slop because
Speaker 2: it's bad. Let's assume even that it's better. Let's assume
Speaker 2: that AI video were indistinguishable. If that were the case,
Speaker 2: would you actually want more of it in your feed,
Speaker 2: or would you want to turn it off even more.
Speaker 2: I don't think that we know the answers to these questions,
Speaker 2: but it's very likely that if companies that are running
Speaker 2: these platforms can't figure out a way to filter out
Speaker 2: AI content, there's a part of the population that's going
Speaker 2: to start tuning out. There's also advertisers that might be
Speaker 2: scared by that, So I do think it's an existential
Speaker 2: threat to the for you page. I think it actually
Speaker 2: might be a boon for this subscriber or substack type communities,
Speaker 2: like I think thatsting when people start rushing towards people
Speaker 2: that they trust, I think that that could be a really,
Speaker 2: really positive thing. I'll say for me, one of the
Speaker 2: things that I would be looking at if I were
Speaker 2: an AI creator is the fact that because Sora too
Speaker 2: is so good at making videos, it lowered the barrier
Speaker 2: of entries so far that I don't think open ai
Speaker 2: is that far from generating their own feed. You know,
Speaker 2: if you can make an interesting video with only two sentences, well,
Speaker 2: chat gbt can make two sentences. They're collecting everyone's prompts,
Speaker 2: they're seeing what gets likes and engagement on Sora. I
Speaker 2: don't understand why they would need a human in the
Speaker 2: loop soon.
Speaker 1: I believe there's Actually we were just covering a story
Speaker 1: in the Financial Times about gen Z being less on
Speaker 1: social media, and I think a lot of it has
Speaker 1: to do with the sort of enthitification of the feed.
Speaker 1: And I see a lot of people kind of resigned
Speaker 1: to the fact that going on Instagram means scrolling through
Speaker 1: a lot of shit, and a lot of shit that's
Speaker 1: AI generated. It's no longer social media. It's like watching
Speaker 1: fake video. Yeah, it's hyper and shitification. It is the
Speaker 1: most and shittified feed you could possibly have. And I
Speaker 1: am totally agreeing that there will be people who are
Speaker 1: super down with that and who are going to enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Again, there are people who enjoy this. I don't want
Speaker 2: to say that they're doing the wrong thing by enjoying
Speaker 2: AI video a.
Speaker 1: Fruit cutting another fruit, something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, I'm not here to judge what people are watching.
Speaker 2: But if you play this out to its logical conclusion, here,
Speaker 2: it looks like social media companies generating their own videos
Speaker 2: without creators in the middle, for a hyper and shitified feed.
Speaker 1: So five to ten years is a huge difference. So
Speaker 1: let's just say, five years from now, what do you
Speaker 1: think the state of AI video looks like, and what
Speaker 1: does it mean for the Internet, for politics, and just
Speaker 1: us generally as a culture.
Speaker 2: If we project the current growth out, it is indistinguishable
Speaker 2: and everywhere. If we take a contrarian view, we can
Speaker 2: see that people might not be into it and it
Speaker 2: might lose a lot of money. We don't know which
Speaker 2: direction it's going to go, and I don't claim to
Speaker 2: be able to tell which direction we're going in. But
Speaker 2: in that first scenario where it's indistinguishable, it'll still be
Speaker 2: distinguishable by machine learning algorithms, It'll still be detectable by experts.
Speaker 2: I still don't think it presents legal problems, but it
Speaker 2: presents massive disinformation problems. I'm very scared about that. And
Speaker 2: then there's another scenario which I think is a little
Speaker 2: bit more optimistic, which I actually subscribe to, which is
Speaker 2: that AI content becomes its own genre. There are companies
Speaker 2: that figure out a way to monetize it. It stays
Speaker 2: separate from our real feeds to whatever degree the viewer wants.
Speaker 2: And I think that this is the optimistic vision, and
Speaker 2: that a lot of the tech community believes in too,
Speaker 2: and that Sam Altman would probably say, you know, he's
Speaker 2: been asked about this, He's been asked, how do we
Speaker 2: tell what's real or fake? And I actually didn't hate
Speaker 2: his answer. He said, well, just like we've always told
Speaker 2: we follow the people we trust, like we have human
Speaker 2: communication networks. Now, I think that his accelerationist view is
Speaker 2: kind of running against that a little bit, but I
Speaker 2: do believe that at its core, that's how we're going
Speaker 2: to figure this out, and it might push people less online.
Speaker 2: Like I just think that there's just so many unanswered questions.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there's a few different scenarios that right now,
Speaker 2: I think we just have to flip a coin on
Speaker 2: which one we believe in.
Speaker 1: So you said the reason that you got interested in
Speaker 1: understanding AI video was as a tool for production. When
Speaker 1: that was the case, what were you excited about and
Speaker 1: sort of why has that now changed for you.
Speaker 2: I was excited about it lowering the grounds to doing
Speaker 2: creative things. I have a green screen studio in my basement.
Speaker 2: I was excited about it, you know, putting me in
Speaker 2: different types of stud and different types of environments. I
Speaker 2: was excited about it improving my graphics workflows. What started
Speaker 2: steering me away from it. It was some of the
Speaker 2: ethical concerns. I did realize that at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, like this was mostly stolen information. It was
Speaker 2: actually not that much more useful than the actual room
Speaker 2: I'm in right now, Like I can make a decent
Speaker 2: studio myself. And really what made me turn was just
Speaker 2: using the tools. I think a lot of the people
Speaker 2: who are using them, who come from my background, realize
Speaker 2: that they aren't very fun tools to use. It's not
Speaker 2: a creative process for me. It's really frustrating.
Speaker 1: Well, you just type something in.
Speaker 2: You just type something in, and you hope it comes
Speaker 2: back the way you want it. It's like if because
Speaker 2: I have a history as a director, it is like
Speaker 2: every time I needed to tell the actor exactly what
Speaker 2: to say, exactly how to deliver it, over and over
Speaker 2: and over. And as a creative person and as a director,
Speaker 2: I just want to collaborate with people who bring something
Speaker 2: to the table. I don't want to bring everything to
Speaker 2: the table myself. I don't want to tell everyone how
Speaker 2: to do everything right. That's not what the process of
Speaker 2: creating ever was. It was always about collaboration. It was
Speaker 2: always a fun process. I find the idea of just
Speaker 2: sitting in my basement creating AI videos with text is
Speaker 2: just it's exhausting. It doesn't feel creative at all. So
Speaker 2: but I'm not saying that people should hate every AI
Speaker 2: video they see, like some of them can be creative.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's just taking that opportunity to train yourself
Speaker 2: to see what these video models look like. Because if
Speaker 2: you're into it, that's totally fine, but then you're at
Speaker 2: least ready for when it is used for disinformation, which
Speaker 2: I think is enough of ball at this point.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much, Jeremy. I will be tuned
Speaker 1: into your feed. You are I don't know what I
Speaker 1: would call you. Is it vigilante justice? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: But you're doing some kind of public service education education.
Speaker 3: You're an educator, Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: You're an AI educator.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for tech stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Kara Price. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis,
Speaker 1: Melissa Slaughter, and Tyler Hill. It was executive produced by
Speaker 1: me oswa Oshan, Julia Nutter, and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and Katrina Norvell for iHeart Podcasts. Kyle Murdoch mixed this
Speaker 1: episode and wrote our theme song. Join us on Friday
Speaker 1: for the week in tech oz and I will run
Speaker 1: through the headlines you may have missed. Please rate, review,
Speaker 1: and reach out to us at tech Stuff Podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com.