> Dan, who created the video of Pompeii, says he recognises a lots of details in his videos are historically inaccurate.
"AI-generated content isn't perfect, and while I strive for accuracy, these videos are more about evoking the feeling of a time period rather than being a 100% factual recreation.
"They're more like artistic interpretations rather than strict documentaries."
As someone technical who works in creative circles, I hear this kind of reasoning all the time and it drives me nuts. The “it’s just art bro, don’t take it so seriously” excuse is so tired, but like the best fake excuses there’s no way to counter it.
Well that's plainly not true. Striving for accuracy is going through the script and doing this thing called "fact checking". It's an actual job that used to mean something to writers, journalists, documentarians...
The noble goal of egalitarian democratization of media has had the unintended consequence of completely blurring the lines between quality and ... non-quality information. What galls me most is the people who care about fact and truth, and used to be the guardians or advocates for such things, are just drowned in a sea of bots, malicious actors, and the ignorant and are thereby discouraged.
This idea that fact checking is preferable or possible or even likely to happen seems wrong. The answer isn't to fix the disease that is Social Media but to inoculate ourselves from it entirely.
Its either that or yield to the idea that human psychology is so malleable that global corporations (and the engineers who make millions working for them) control us like marionettes.
Oh of course you can counter it. The issue is less with artistic interpretation but with the doublethink happening here. You can depict something as a stylized artistic representation that does not pretend to be accurate. I'm pretty sure the bombing of Guernica did not look exactly as Picasso portrayed it, but his painting is still a powerful piece that we can use to understand the artist's feelings about the historical event. And even in the most rigorous of documentaries, there is still room for artistry: you can convey information in an interesting and thoughtful manner that doesn't sacrifice factuality.
You can't really simultaneously say that you strive for accuracy but, at the end of the day, you're "just" creating an artistic interpretation. That seems to conflate artistry with a failure to capture historical accuracy, which is so bizarre since those things are more or less orthogonal to each other.
I think we can safely call a spade a spade here: people making lazy AI historical videos are just that; lazy. They found a cheap and easy way to churn out content that makes money, and their greed outweighs their commitment to truth or historicity.
Just seems to be one more front in this War on Truth we've found ourselves in over the last decade or so. Yes, I know some will say it's been longer than that, the MSM is evil, etc. It's true that the 24-hour news cycle and the replacement of news with infotainment, purveyance of propaganda as news by some outlets, etc. have not been helpful. But, about a decade ago, we entered a completely new phase that is qualitatively different. And it feels like the end stage.
Whether it's for political gain or profit or otherwise, the value of truth and shared reality has been greatly diminished. It's not just that the videos aren't accurate and the creators are so dismissive. It's not even as much about the supply side any more.
It's that half or more of the population is so willing to choose their own reality and could care less whether it's actually true.
> The “it’s just art bro, don’t take it so seriously” excuse is so tired
There’s nothing wrong with it as long as they’re not presenting it as history but are presenting it as the work of fiction it is.
Unfortunately they’ll, at best, have fine print that says it’s not history but the whole presentation is supposed to encourage the viewers to believe this ks real.
Hollywood has been creating historically inaccurate portrayals for over a hundred years. I'm really not seeing the harm in these shitty little vignettes. If anything, it's more concerning that TikTok's algorithms are able to get people to give their attention to such poor quality content.
> I'm really not seeing the harm in these shitty little vignettes
Pompei and the Black Death aren't historical events that continue to evoke grievances today.
But creating an AI generated recreation of the Nakba or Nanjing Massacre can evoke extreme reactions to this day, and actually instigate diplomatic fallout and even violence in the modern world.
If you keep percolating and percolating such content, then it can complete shift narratives.
Technology is inherently neutral - it's us humans who use technology for good and for bad - but moderation has simply not kept up the rate of change.
> it's more concerning that TikTok's algorithms are able to get people to give their attention to such poor quality content
People will continue watching what they want, and recommender algorithms will continue to recommend them as such.
If recommender algorithms are not regulated, then this is the status quo that arises.
On that front, statist countries like Singapore have better managed these problems, but they also pair it with permissive national security legislation.
The problem is in economics and scale. Hollywood productions were pretty expensive, hence, there were few of them – and they could be tracked as known narratives. ("Ah, well, this is Ben Hur. We know this.") Gen-AI content is incredibly cheap and thus potentially ubiquitous, and has a real potential to become normalized in common imagination.
On the other hand, I think this makes it even clearer that it's easy to manipulate the truth, since now more people can do it. Before, it was only a small subset of the population who had the ability to, and they were more easily believed.
> Despite the videos offering millions a window into history, a number of historians have shared concerns about the accuracy of the content and whether AI can truly resurrect the past, or are we just seeing a polished, modernised version of history designed for engagement?
While I find it annoying to present inaccurate details as "history" I still think we need to put the onus on information consumers to think critically and go beyond taking everything at face value. The world is full of manipulation, lies of omission, and actual lies as well. Taking things at face value (especially on TikTok and YouTube) is foolish. If you don't want to be a fool the ball is in your court, the world will not be becoming more foolproof.
It is dangerous. In most of third world, far right politics is largely based on settling historic scores. To that end, Im guessing this will be weaponised by lots of groups to create content to target minorities.
I do believe bulk of the use for this more than for education purposes, will be for propaganda, radicalisation etc.
While the makers might get away making 'its just art' excuse. This will be a new round of fake news/history flood unseen like ever before. Every bit of vague/abstract statement, or even an absent detail in history books can be taken out of context, or just made from fiction to create narratives against vulnerable groups of people.
One wonders how this will be regulated or if it can even be regulated.
When people talk of AI safety, more than terminator/skynet style apocalypse I largely imagine these sort of things to cause more short/middle term damage.
> In most of the third world, far right politics is largely based on settling historic scores. To that end, I'm guessing this will be weaponised by lots of groups to create content to target minorities.
Current events would suggest that the word "third" is redundant.
Forgive me taking my oafish American hammer to this particular nail, but - this is speech and should not be "regulated," full stop.
The solution to this being used to disseminate falsehoods is education, both about the technology (to make it easier for the average person to spot AI content which at least for the time being is still possible) and about topics likely to have falsehoods spread about them.
I don't really see how this is any different from a videogame or tv show set in some historical time period - it's clearly fiction and there are always historical inaccuracies, often egregious (a newspaper in Gladiator? )
So people are doing historical fiction in video format? That's kinda cool, even if the people doing it aren't experts being meticulous about every last detail.
If you spend public funds on NPR or the BBC to produce an educational resource with these kind of problems where the core message was historicity, not some other educational outcome, you'd be wasting national funds and be pilloried for it.
It's contextual. Horrible Histories can make boners. some soft-ed deliverable can make boners about things, not core to the syllabus. If you call it "history" and you want to teach lived experience, then don't put tomato on the roman pizza. It's actually not that hard to get right btw. Mostly, its lazy.
Are you really pushing AI apologism to the point of calling "anality" the concerns of experienced historians? How does this contribute to a reasonable discussion about the dangers of what this video might represent?
I would understand (and not agree) if you said you don't think the videos are dangerous or problematic, but dismissing valid concerns from subject matter experts is just pure tech hybris. And that's quite scary, to be honest, to see how many people already subscribe to this complete lack of critical discussion on the AI video trend.
These videos are viral traps made to make money. They have absolutely no historic base, and yet they are presented as such on social media. I don't care what the authors say, because that's not what 53 million people read when they just see a video that's absolutely inaccurate.
Yeah, and meanwhile BBC are pretty comfortable with using blatant CGI to intentionally mislead people into believing that there are impossibly small cats in the world:
One could critique Dateline or the History Channel by nitpicking accuracy as well. All of those efforts require dedication, and that's all that's standing between a production effort and the homogenization of history.
You can disagree with expert historians who have researched their field, and sometimes you'll be right.
But an amateur who uses AI and in 4 hours work has produced a complete falsehood seems more dangerous, in that it creates pollution very fast and easily, in a way real (mistaken or not) historians cannot.
It's simply a lot of garbage, made very fast and easily. It has the potential to outcompete everything else.
They are not. It’s quite difficult to prompt a generative model to get details correct, and it takes a ton of tries if you can make it work at all. Practically impossible if the model wasn’t trained with data that makes a distinction in what you’re trying to specify.
So creating accurate generative media is categorically more difficult than inaccurate media.
Because it’s a lot easier to make up shit than to create stuff that is vetted?
Also there are videos made by historians or science educators.
Of the top of my head I can think of Flint Dibble who is an paleontologist? and miniminuteman who is a science communicator who also has an archeology degree?
And while both of them have decent to great success on YouTube, their success pales in comparison to the Ancient Aliens and Atlantis video makers, simply because those are more attractive stories even if they’re not real, but are presented as legitimate theories.
This is a grossly unfair comment. Do you really expect someone who had dedicated their life to an academic pursuit to also be CGI experts and filmmakers?
Why can’t professionals be allowed to criticize without having others fault them?
Edit to add: I’m sure the majority of devs on this site have opinions on current LLMs, is it fair to dismiss everyone’s concerns and tell them “you know how to program, make a better model.”
Consider storytales told around the campfire. Are they true? Before the internet and journalists, you had to decide for yourself.
We are rebounding from a historically brief period of high trust to something more historically normal.
The difference between campfire stories and the world we live in is our world has journalists who fact check and surface falsehoods. Sure, there’s a delay. The work takes a moment. So we hang out while experts do the debunking for us.
[+] [-] gyomu|1 year ago|reply
As someone technical who works in creative circles, I hear this kind of reasoning all the time and it drives me nuts. The “it’s just art bro, don’t take it so seriously” excuse is so tired, but like the best fake excuses there’s no way to counter it.
[+] [-] djeastm|1 year ago|reply
Well that's plainly not true. Striving for accuracy is going through the script and doing this thing called "fact checking". It's an actual job that used to mean something to writers, journalists, documentarians...
The noble goal of egalitarian democratization of media has had the unintended consequence of completely blurring the lines between quality and ... non-quality information. What galls me most is the people who care about fact and truth, and used to be the guardians or advocates for such things, are just drowned in a sea of bots, malicious actors, and the ignorant and are thereby discouraged.
[+] [-] tmpz22|1 year ago|reply
Its either that or yield to the idea that human psychology is so malleable that global corporations (and the engineers who make millions working for them) control us like marionettes.
[+] [-] brendoelfrendo|1 year ago|reply
I think we can safely call a spade a spade here: people making lazy AI historical videos are just that; lazy. They found a cheap and easy way to churn out content that makes money, and their greed outweighs their commitment to truth or historicity.
[+] [-] unclebucknasty|1 year ago|reply
Whether it's for political gain or profit or otherwise, the value of truth and shared reality has been greatly diminished. It's not just that the videos aren't accurate and the creators are so dismissive. It's not even as much about the supply side any more.
It's that half or more of the population is so willing to choose their own reality and could care less whether it's actually true.
[+] [-] forthac|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] addicted|1 year ago|reply
There’s nothing wrong with it as long as they’re not presenting it as history but are presenting it as the work of fiction it is.
Unfortunately they’ll, at best, have fine print that says it’s not history but the whole presentation is supposed to encourage the viewers to believe this ks real.
[+] [-] mike_ivanov|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ujkiolp|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 13_9_7_7_5_18|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tbrownaw|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] istjohn|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] alephnerd|1 year ago|reply
Pompei and the Black Death aren't historical events that continue to evoke grievances today.
But creating an AI generated recreation of the Nakba or Nanjing Massacre can evoke extreme reactions to this day, and actually instigate diplomatic fallout and even violence in the modern world.
If you keep percolating and percolating such content, then it can complete shift narratives.
Technology is inherently neutral - it's us humans who use technology for good and for bad - but moderation has simply not kept up the rate of change.
> it's more concerning that TikTok's algorithms are able to get people to give their attention to such poor quality content
People will continue watching what they want, and recommender algorithms will continue to recommend them as such.
If recommender algorithms are not regulated, then this is the status quo that arises.
On that front, statist countries like Singapore have better managed these problems, but they also pair it with permissive national security legislation.
[+] [-] masswerk|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] userbinator|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jay_kyburz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] RajT88|1 year ago|reply
If you have to ask... The answer should be clear.
[+] [-] grg0|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] aikinai|1 year ago|reply
It is a good signal not to watch whatever this is.
[+] [-] recursive|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] felizuno|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] FranzFerdiNaN|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kamaal|1 year ago|reply
I do believe bulk of the use for this more than for education purposes, will be for propaganda, radicalisation etc.
While the makers might get away making 'its just art' excuse. This will be a new round of fake news/history flood unseen like ever before. Every bit of vague/abstract statement, or even an absent detail in history books can be taken out of context, or just made from fiction to create narratives against vulnerable groups of people.
One wonders how this will be regulated or if it can even be regulated.
When people talk of AI safety, more than terminator/skynet style apocalypse I largely imagine these sort of things to cause more short/middle term damage.
[+] [-] monooso|1 year ago|reply
Current events would suggest that the word "third" is redundant.
[+] [-] pc86|1 year ago|reply
The solution to this being used to disseminate falsehoods is education, both about the technology (to make it easier for the average person to spot AI content which at least for the time being is still possible) and about topics likely to have falsehoods spread about them.
You cannot put this genie back in its bottle.
[+] [-] sincerely|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] deadbabe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] theRealArgherna|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tbrownaw|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kochikame|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] somenameforme|1 year ago|reply
- houses wouldn't have had large glazed windows
- there were no trains (a train track is visible)
- Vesuvius didn't start with lava spewing everywhere
- stemmed wine glasses and pepper mills didn't exist
- people would be reclining while eating, not sitting on dining chairs
- the bread roll is a modern loaf, not an ancient one
If you're going to nipick to this degree of anality then essentially any historical documentary ever made is "amateur and dangerous."
[+] [-] ggm|1 year ago|reply
It's contextual. Horrible Histories can make boners. some soft-ed deliverable can make boners about things, not core to the syllabus. If you call it "history" and you want to teach lived experience, then don't put tomato on the roman pizza. It's actually not that hard to get right btw. Mostly, its lazy.
[+] [-] camillomiller|1 year ago|reply
I would understand (and not agree) if you said you don't think the videos are dangerous or problematic, but dismissing valid concerns from subject matter experts is just pure tech hybris. And that's quite scary, to be honest, to see how many people already subscribe to this complete lack of critical discussion on the AI video trend.
These videos are viral traps made to make money. They have absolutely no historic base, and yet they are presented as such on social media. I don't care what the authors say, because that's not what 53 million people read when they just see a video that's absolutely inaccurate.
[+] [-] sorryimgreen|1 year ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W86cTIoMv2U
Not to mention Planet Earth, which feels like watching Finding Nemo
[+] [-] crtasm|1 year ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty-spotted_cat
[+] [-] aaron695|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] gunian|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] renewiltord|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] daseiner1|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unyttigfjelltol|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] abletonlive|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] boringg|1 year ago|reply
You think the subtitle differences by modern day historians vs completely wrong AI histories is comparable?
[+] [-] the_af|1 year ago|reply
But an amateur who uses AI and in 4 hours work has produced a complete falsehood seems more dangerous, in that it creates pollution very fast and easily, in a way real (mistaken or not) historians cannot.
It's simply a lot of garbage, made very fast and easily. It has the potential to outcompete everything else.
[+] [-] ralph84|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lukev|1 year ago|reply
So creating accurate generative media is categorically more difficult than inaccurate media.
[+] [-] addicted|1 year ago|reply
Also there are videos made by historians or science educators.
Of the top of my head I can think of Flint Dibble who is an paleontologist? and miniminuteman who is a science communicator who also has an archeology degree?
And while both of them have decent to great success on YouTube, their success pales in comparison to the Ancient Aliens and Atlantis video makers, simply because those are more attractive stories even if they’re not real, but are presented as legitimate theories.
[+] [-] azemetre|1 year ago|reply
Edit to add: I’m sure the majority of devs on this site have opinions on current LLMs, is it fair to dismiss everyone’s concerns and tell them “you know how to program, make a better model.”
That feels wrong.
[+] [-] camillomiller|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cadamsdotcom|1 year ago|reply
We are rebounding from a historically brief period of high trust to something more historically normal.
The difference between campfire stories and the world we live in is our world has journalists who fact check and surface falsehoods. Sure, there’s a delay. The work takes a moment. So we hang out while experts do the debunking for us.
That’s a pretty good state of affairs.
[+] [-] wesselbindt|1 year ago|reply