Post by @futurebird@sauropods.win

Months ago I found a strange youTube channel. It was an imitation of liberal political youTube channels like Miadas Touch and MSW media that review stories from the bigger press and offer liberal/left commentary.

But the news stories used in the video were sometimes fake and the young Black man they have reading? He is pure AI.

I decided to check on this channel again today. It is still VERY active.

https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/116272840734165707

myrmepropagandist

@futurebird@sauropods.win 5 mo. ago

10 Replies

2 Boosts

Christopher

@Kichae@tenforward.social 6 hr. ago

@futurebird The last time I was down home, I caught my dad watching pro-Mark-Carney/Pro-Liberal Party of Canada propaganda channels.

There are worse things he could be watching these days, so I didn't say anything. But the video he was watching was uncanny AF. It was obvious just from listening from the next room that the audio was AI generated, and the video was even more obvious. This old guy in a rocking chair kept moving in ways that human bodies just don't move.

There were a couple of lines of the monologue that stood out to me, so I jotted them down and went searching. I found no fewer than 4 other YouTube channels, all with AI-generated people so deep in the uncanny valley it hurt, regurgitating the exact same script.

All of them had large numbers of very enthusiastic comments.

The boomers are not ok.

myrmepropagandist

@futurebird@sauropods.win 7 hr. ago

They have stuck to the format and spent tons and tons of tokens posting 100s of these videos.

They all have the same format. First they show clips from the news, sometimes of a real story, sometimes not. Then the fake young man recites a kind of summary of the story that often makes little sense.

Anyway these get enough views (barely) to be profitable. And this is probably one of many channels.

A link showing how all of the thumbnails are the same with a yellow headline and still from TV news media.

myrmepropagandist

@futurebird@sauropods.win 6 hr. ago

Also, I can't get over how bad his haircut is. He's not real and ya'll couldn't even get that right?

This is like a subtile thing but the way his hair is tells me that a white person made this. It's also odd that he has fancy board games as the background but Scrabble is upside down? What self-respecting board game nerd would overlook that??

And what is the thing on the far right? It's not Magic the Gathering cards...

Screenshot of the AI generated guy from the videos. He looks like he just woke up.

myrmepropagandist

@futurebird@sauropods.win 6 hr. ago

This was someone who think leftists look scruffy LMAO. But ... there is truth to that but it's also not true.

The more closely you look at these things the more they fall apart.

"this is what you think I like?"

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange 4 hr. ago

@futurebird The hair looks like what people with frizzy hair look like with blur background or a fake background turned on. The model is trying really hard to find a sharp outline for the edge of the person, but it fails because such a thing doesn't exist. Instead, it cuts off somewhere in the middle of the frizz.

If you train a ML model on that kind of video of what people look like, I'd imagine it would produce something like that. It's the same shape hair, but without the real background showing through.

Luddicus Mus

@algernon@come-from.mad-scientist.club 6 hr. ago

@futurebird I seem to recall there was (at least) one video where the AI glitched, and the "guy" kept repeating the same sentence for a few minutes - and the video was still uploaded! Probably noone even watched it prior to publishing it.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was still there somewhere.

myrmepropagandist

@futurebird@sauropods.win 6 hr. ago

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myrmepropagandist

@futurebird@sauropods.win 7 hr. ago

There are a few possibilities for the goals of this network. I think the simple and obvious one is most likely: create content that is similar to existing popular content and earn money by gathering views.

There is another possibility and that is the potential to spread misinformation to political ends. This could be done close to an election in hopes of impacting the results. I don't think this could be ruled out. But, these imitation channels aren't trying hard to get viewers to notice them.

myrmepropagandist

@futurebird@sauropods.win 7 hr. ago

To effectively spread misinformation you'd want to cultivate a community and have them form a para-social relationship with your presenter. But this channel isn't really trying to do that. It's just trying to blend in with a kind of content that gets views and skim some of them for profit.

It's just a little more creepy when they do it with political content.

vestige

@vestige@sleepyhe.ad 7 hr. ago

@futurebird I think a lot of us remember when it turned out that many of the accounts on Twitter promoting extremist content were from outside the U.S. We like to look at things in terms of narratives around Russian troll farms and things that make it make sense why someone would put so much effort into influencing our lives and intruding into our society when it's really just people looking for a buck.

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