The AI slop problem is bad enough on TikTok/YouTube today. I shudder at the future of user-generated video platforms. I also wonder if the low barrier to create these videos will outpace the storage and processing capacity of the free platforms.
I've long proposed that we should have an "AI Instagram" where different tweaked personas (perfected via A/B testing/Genetic algorithms) are displayed to users with ai-generated images/posts/comments. Each persona set is specific to each user, and they don't have other IRL users that they can interact with. The user can interact with the personas, and even message them. The developer can add more features over time (stories, short form video, etc) as people get bored and technology formats improve, but it's unlimited content. It's perfect for advertising, because you can embed products and ads seamlessly and generate them alongside everything else.
That said, storage is far cheaper than GPUs at the moment.
Have you tried AI porn ? There's something in the fact it's fake uncanny characters that makes it non-exciting. Like, jerking off to a toaster basically, and I assume it'd be the same for a social network with no human ?
This is probably already researched today, and it seems close to how people would interact with clones of their deceased relatives or famous people of the past. However it's also a powerful tool to create nearly 100% successful influencing by instructing each persona to subtly inject the same idea into its human user by employing the most convincing tactics needed for that user. It's quite easy to foresee the use in advertising, where it would completely redefine the word "targeted", but also corrupt politics.
Using a recommendation algorithm similar to TikTok’s, learn what each specific user are into, and instead of showing content produced by other users, produce custom-tailored content on the fly, perfectly matching the type, tone, style, length, and rhythm each user likes.
Because this way they don’t have to rely on pesky people to produce content that maximises the engagement and retention of the other pesky people to which they want to show as many ads as possible.
I am not implying this is a good thing. Or a bad one. It’s just a step further down the same path we’re already on, while taking an unreliable and costly middle-man (content producing users) out of the picture.
I never implied it was good thing. Or even something I want.
I’m just certain it is an obvious next step given, on one side, these platforms’ goals and incentives, and on the other how generative AI capabilities have progressed in the past couple of years.
I’m pretty sure the smart play, if they want diverse, engaging, and surprising content will involve leaving some room for people to create things and somehow reward them for it.
But whatever they make won’t only be used as content to show to others, but also as new training data to feed the machine.
In my experience, YouTube’s is much more influenced by the latest videos a user has watched. It’s pretty much always "more of the same".
TikTok seems to manage to more quickly identify users’ interests and surface content based on more signals, aggregated over a longer period of time, without relying as much on conscious users’ actions (ie "follow / subscribe"), producing a wider diversity of recommendations.
There’s also the odd suggestion every now and then, probably used to gauge a user’s interest in a different category.
The point here isn’t to give users any kind of truth. It already isn’t YouTube goal. Wether we’re talking about the videos or the ads, they’re happy spreading ridiculous nonsense.
The only point of these kinds of platforms, for worse and for worse, is to give users what they want. So hallucinations wouldn’t matter, as long as the end result matches users’ preferences.
Oh, but isn't that what people want -- to live in a media reality that confirms 100% of their pre-existing biases with no risk of encountering cognitive dissonance? You're leaving money on the table by ignoring this opportunity! Move fast and break things!
