More and more often I see comments on videos asking, "Is this AI?" There are full-blown subreddits dedicated to that question. As the technology improves, it becomes harder and harder to tell the difference between real and generated images and videos. People take polls, noticing certain markers — short length of the video, shifting and inconsistent background, etc. But those things will eventually get fixed, and there will be truly no way to tell reality from fiction.
Sometimes I see a video so bizarre that I think, "There's no way it's real!" But then I look at the comments and see a lot of people say that the video predates the creation of generative AI and that they saw it back in the 2010s. And it appears as if we rely on our own collective memory of all the old videos to confirm that.
It reminds me of the phenomenon called "low-background steel". After the first nuclear bomb detonation, the air got filled with new radioactive isotopes. And because steel production requires massive air injection, every piece of steel produced after 1945 was contaminated with traces of nuclear fallout. It wasn't a problem in most cases, but for some sensitive scientific equipment, like Geiger counters, you really needed uncontaminated steel. You can't measure radiation if your instrument itself is radioactive. That's why steel produced before 1945 became valuable. Typically, it was sourced from ships — either from regular scrapping or shipwrecks.
Since the end of atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs, it's not as much of a problem anymore, as the radiation has mostly returned to background levels. And for the sensitive equipment, steel can be produced via methods that control the air source. Or you can just switch to other materials.
What will happen with generated videos though, I don't know. There's no half-life of this technology, it won't decay. Maybe new technologies will appear that will be able to tell what's generated and what's not — with certainty, not with assumptions, as AI does now. Maybe AI bubble will pop and it won't be free to use anymore — it's expensive to run all those data centers — and people will have to stop using it for silly stuff, it'll become niche. Or maybe we'll be rewatching videos made before 2020 until the end of times.
It's fascinating to read! I don't know what will happen in the future as well, but I'm also very curious about it.
Great and interesting read! Coincidently, my 11 year old boy is all about nuclear catastrophes these days. We too show each other various impressive videos. Then the other one often downplays it saying: pfff, it's AI.
The AI bubble can't burst. The US Government and many American companies have bet everything on AI. They need people to use and pay for AI, so they're trying to push AI everywhere. Furthermore, they won't accept losing the AI race to China, even though they've already lost it. People can criticize China all they want, but in the end, they offer great services for a fraction of the price.