Whoa, AI Slop Tsunami

Hey folks, watch out. There is a massive amount of AI slop / manipulation on you-tube right now. It happened awfully fast. Given that it's such easy money I suppose it was inevitable.

ALL OF IT: The script (content/narrative), images, and vocal narration are FULLY AI generated.

The stuff I have come across is in regards to history. I have come across material that is clearly AI generated and is measurably, provably incorrect in the events and timelines. Lord knows what else is out there.

Symptoms:
---Regardless of content, they usually run an "emotional response" script. "They laughed when ..."
---Visual images are of course bizarre, but often they use historical photos or footage to seem credible
---And the AI narration sounds quite convincing, except that it stumbles over complex numbers of any kind
---Dates, events, numbers, etc. are all twisted to serve the emotional response script.

So it begins.

"Don't recommend channel" is a powerful button.

Thank you r ranson - I'll definitely look out for this button!!

I've seen history ones too (the canned medieval produce was a bit of a giveaway!) and a pretty good hugelculture one.

It's a good button for curating what youtube shows you (not interested is another) and is extremely damaging to the yt channel stance with the algorithm.

I have a different yt profile for watching each of the topics I'm interested in.  One for yarn, one for permaculture, one for painting, now one for music.

It takes about two weeks of liberally using the not interested and don't recommend channel buttons to get rid of all the slop (ai or otherwise) and teach the algorithms to show only higher quality content.  But it's pretty easy to take control of what yt recommend.

I also block channels that consistently have videos 8:02 long as they are obviously padding out content to get greater ad income.  They usually only have 2 min of value.  Five videos in a row of 8 min and a few seconds long, and they get blocked.

Now I have videos recommended that have less fluff and filler.

r ransom wrote:I have a different yt profile for watching each of the topics I'm interested in.  One for yarn, one for permaculture, one for painting, now one for music.

That, my friend, is an awesome idea! Although I mainly look at gardens and permaculture...

The yt (and most other) algorithms are designed to give viewers what they think they want to watch.  So there are mechanisms we can use as viewers to reward good creators and punish slop makers.

Hi Douglas,

Quite true. In the historical posts, usually a few key elements are omitted or changed. If photos are shown, sometimes the photos don’t make sense … for example, in one video a number of military vehicles were shown … all with the same ID  #.    Sometimes people’s clothing do not match the era of the photo.  I am concerned about the number of teens and preteens watching this stuff and believing it.  

History is tough because none of us lived through what's being discussed. So basically, we're dealing with an interpretation of the people and events. I used youtube a lot last year for research on my ancestral cuisine research. I found it useful to look at a variety of videos on a particular time period or cultural group, rather than just one popular video. I tried to find common denominators in the videos to build a framework I felt was decently accurate. Points of view evolve with social changes, so that helped sift out modern interpretations that didn't seem to fit.

And this is why I’ve shifted to peertube and mastadon when looking for information.   No monetization, no algo and a stronger anti-AI mindset.,

Thank you Carrie - I may well swap over to peertube and see how I get on - I like their concise and comprehensible code of conduct.

I wonder if there is (or could be) a way to embed peertube into Permies?

testing: [youtube]https://peertube.tv/w/d1cPExXtzYgx8GE1RkvJdv[/youtube]

no, doesn't quite work...

[vimeo]https://peertube.tv/w/d1cPExXtzYgx8GE1RkvJdv[/vimeo]

not through Vimeo either.

If there is a will…

https://docs.joinpeertube.org/api/embed-player

There is also a way to do it via an html iplayer but i haven’t tried tinkering with it

Brilliant, thoughtful comments above -- much appreciated.

Today I saw this new piece from BBC. Apparently I'm not the only one crying foul. And the backlash has begun. Bloody well right.

"AI 'slop' is transforming social media - and a backlash is brewing"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wx2dz2v44o.amp

This reminds me of the photoshops from 20 years ago.

I've found myself aggressively using the "Do not play this artist" button on Spotify, for the same reason. If the recommendations start playing something AI, it just runs down that rabbit hole until you've blocked enough "Artists" to find real people again.

The goal seems to be to make the consumer feel as helpless as possible in the shadow of the tsunami.

So that we don't realize how much control we have over the algorithm.

As both consumer and creator, I ran a lot of tests, and it's shocking how powerful these "do not recommend" buttons are.

I have a YT account strictly for perma & nature conservation type vids, then I have an account for other.  I have found that I have only come to use my perma account more than anything now. My other just got too flooded with so much junk, I don't even want to go back.  Now that  know about the button, I will put it to use on my perma account, to save it from being destroyed.  Thanks for all the insight on this!  I have used AI a few times, at first for help with resume, but didn't like that.  Then for finding words I had on the tip of my tongue (it works great for that! LOL).  I really don't use AI, maybe b/c I see the downside more than an upside to it.  YT has become nothing but an emotional catastrophe if you aren't there with a focus or intentional purpose.   --Tess

Another problem I noticed is that since the videos automatically start playing even when you don’t click on it, the algorithm thinks you watched it and recommends more like that. Even if it’s just a few seconds. But if you watch YouTube on an ad blocking web browser instead of the app, there’s no ads at least.

Turn off auto play

Remove from watch history is another good one

Last night I spent half an hour going through the suggestions yt gave me.  If you already have the algorithm trained, the "new to you" selection is good for this.  If  You are just starting training the algorithm (instead of letting it train you), then your regular suggestions lis works.  It takes a lot longer with an old accout, that's why I like to have several to train from scratch.

Either way, it's usual one video I keep for 5 to 10 that I tell not to recommend.

It looks like it worked well as I'm finally getting ukulele videos and not guitar and violin recommendations. This account has oil paint, water colour, one lofi channel, viva la dirt league, and now ukulele.   Nothing else gets recommend, but I am extremely strict with what I watch on that account.  I have a different account for permaculture, cooking, and gardening, and a different account that i never trained, if i want to know what pup culture is up to.

You can also disable Autoplay in the browser (this is Brave, which I highly recommend; it's Chromium based so Chrome, Edge, and the rest should have the same option). You can get to site-specific settings from the left side of the URL bar > Site Settings. The global setting is in Settings > Privacy and Security > Site and Shields Settings under "Additional Permissions"

Since I am logged in usually, I see very little AI slop because I don't watch that sort of thing. Youtube knows I mostly go to live acoustic music and permaculture related things, so I have to go a long way to find the slop.

Now I look at something logged out and it's almost every single video that is covered in clearly fake photographs! They look as if they could be real, but the fact that in these "documentaries" Bob Dylan always looks like the cover photo of The Times They Are A-Changing is weird, and so are the expressions. They're not as creepy as before, but the gestures and expressions, the "photography"... are all wrong...

I turned off the feature labeled ‘auto preview’ where the video plays without you clicking on it, hope it helps.

Benedict Bosco wrote:You can also disable Autoplay in the browser (this is Brave, which I highly recommend; it's Chromium based so Chrome, Edge, and the rest should have the same option). You can get to site-specific settings from the left side of the URL bar > Site Settings. The global setting is in Settings > Privacy and Security > Site and Shields Settings under "Additional Permissions"

Yeah I use brave as well, I like it.