I watch a lot of STEAM videos on YouTube. In the past I loved supporting new creators but some time last year I stopped trying new channels that don’t have human presenter, there’s just so much slop. Now I’ve noticed that there are channels where even the presenter is AI. I can spot a few tells (presenter is never on screen for very long, voice pacing doesn’t vary, no ums and ahs, etc) but it’s getting harder and I wish I knew more clues.
One thing that seems to help is checking the channel history (does the presenter age, have they only started making content very recently etc)
Can someone recommend a good, recent guide to spotting AI videos?
I find that I can’t catch AI more easily if I’ve seen what it can output.
For example, the older videos used to use generative AI on the images and videos themselves, which made it easier to spot those.
Some newer videos are made with the “agentic” tools that have access to various scripts and animation libraries, which come out looking very polished and visually identical to human produced ones. For those, I find that the AI will put unnecessary “work”, into the irrelevant parts of the visualizations. Some of the libraries and fonts are more popular than others, so you might notice a pattern that way too.
For an example to the second category, check out the recent videos from this channel, which has AI generated “music videos”: https://m.youtube.com/@degenerativepixels
It sounds like it’s explicitly not AI-generated video in the sense I think most people would mean?
Also, the irony of being told to “sign in to confirm you’re not a bot” to access a video generated by a bot.
Thanks for the advice and the link. I almost don’t mind AI used for traditional animation, I know its awful and plagiaristic so I avoid it but it doesn’t creep me out in the same way that photoreal deepfake stuff does. Do you know if there are limits to movement, expression etc that are tells for the realistic video?
With how many different models there are, I don’t think there is any standard to look for
Honestly, is that the best AI can do nowadays? The video looks obviously unreal even at low resolution. Where’s the difference between 100% CGI produced and AI? Visually, I mean. I know there’s a difference overall.
The music is just bland; but unfortunately there’s also many humans that produce slop like this (it’s still their IP though!).
Paraphrasing another commenter here, I’d say “overproduced” is the thing to avoid - whether it’s human or machine made.