Countless AI slop channels are relentlessly copying our work. So one day we decided: enough is enough. We went undercover to investigate who’s behind them and what this flood of AI slop means for the future of educational content on YouTube.
Just to be clear, Kurzgesagt is not using AI, but being copied by AI slop.
Which doesn’t make it any less shitty of a channel
What’s so shitty about it? I quite like it.
It’s blatant misinformation based on false data.
A video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHMoNGqQTI
You can also read Kurzgesagt’s ‘response’, which cherry picks two arguments, twists them, doesn’t even properly respond to them, and ignores all other points made. In perfect, corporate PR fashion.
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They claim to be “almost entirely viewer-funded”, which was later proved to NOT be the case. Kurzgesagt deflected when asked about this.
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They were making videos sponsored by Breakthrough Energy, Open Philantropy, and the Gates Foundation.
All three are Bill Gates affiliated.
Those videos were also conveniently aligning with financial interests of Bill Gates, as the videos advocated for carbon capture and lab meat. Bill Gates massively invested in both
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I was just wondering this, considering the lengths they go to on their newer channel to prove that it’s not slop.
I haven’t logged in or watched any recommendations for almost two years now. The only time I see a video is when I actively search for it. Man, have I been out of the loop.
Been using PipePipe for so long that I forgot that YouTube just recommends things to you…
I watch fewer videos in general in many genres unless I already know and trust the creator. I don’t want to support those who rip off others cause other damage, and many videos are to the point where I can’t immediately be sure and just don’t watch.
The moment I realize a video is AI written (it’s pretty easy to tell once you notice the way they tend to go) I blacklist the channel.
I wish it was possible to blacklist AI generated articles from sites like duckduckgo or google as well. Duckduckgo allows you to block a limited amount of websites and I´d rather not use Google at all.
Perhaps search for results prior to 2023 or something, before AI took a massive steaming spraying shit on the internet.
Maybe kagi’s SlopStop is what you want. Otherwise they also allow you to block an unlimited number of websites. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/slopstop.html
youtube without a channel blocker is just a pile of poop.
Weren’t Fern and Veritasium bought by private equity?
I don’t know about Fern but I just this week saw an interview with Derek: The Real Reason Veritasium Sold His Channel. It’s really interesting review of the history of Veritasium, from the beginning. He still has some ownership, but less than 50%. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall him saying who the investors were.
Yes, both.
I am not sure about fern but kzgst and veritasium were both slop long before AI existed. The former had posted a lot of flashy but poorly-researched junk videos and has been a mouthpiece of the bill and Melinda gates Foundation for some time. The latter has done the game but took money from waymo to basically make a big waymo ad.
All of these channels are owned by private equity companies, which honestly is all you need to know.
Veritasium isn’t just misinformation and propaganda, but the guy is also an adult baby that throws a tantrum and gaslights you when you mention errors in his videos. In case you needed another reason to avoid that garbage.
Fern seems to be the single one that actually read the contract and negotiated terms, since even a while after being purchased, they still make high quality videos. Let’s see if it lasts.
Losing Varitasium has sucked. It was gradual and I wanted to give the new videos a fair shake but that shit has gotten so artless.
I’m a big fan of Veritasium. I don’t think I’ve seen an AI video by them yet though. Are the AI ones still with Derek and Casper and the people?
Perhaps I just haven’t gotten to the AI ones yet. Last one I watched was about the billion heart beats in mammals and metabolic rates.
They’re private equity. Have been for a while now.
I jumped ship when I found out.You’re right. I think maybe I’m just having bad days where I get hypercritical of things and then I see a video that’s just less focused and I make assumptions.
I had assumed earlier on that they were using ai assets for visual aids but had no evidence for that. I didn’t examine any further because that just wouldn’t bother me. But the most recent video on filming solar eclipse has cuts and interactions that were probably just clumsily edited but for some reason I hyper fixated on. The previous one I felt off about was the one about EMV chips. Things like cutting to team members having conversations that recap the thing that was just shown or explained. It’s not proof at all but I thought, hey that’s how generative ai writes.
Op’s video addresses this issue where we’re getting so hypervigilant about ai that I thought I saw it in places where I had no evidence to think it was happening. so I guess that phenomenon is real
In the start of the video they confirm they also use AI… So… Yeah…
Context for those who don’t watch: they described using AI images as precursors for photoshop jobs when they can’t find others that work. Implying no “raw” AI gen, but potentially some artists replaced upstream.
(This is a summary from memory, ran into this after watching the vid. Correct me as appropriate.)
that is why I don’t click on youtube links on social media, they are just about guaranteed to be trash.
Except when it’s TechnologyConnections. He is my spirit-geek.
random looking youtube, maybe interesting
The “It’s a british kettle” thumbnail, suggests he is probably from the ‘country’ between Mexico and Canada though.
Yeah and he’s not happy about it, routinely using his specific soapbox to inform people of the precise ways the American government is ruining things. (His 90 minute video on renewable energy from a few months back veers hard into a political plea, unusually direct for the channel but it’s very clear how much he cares and wants people to push for radical change) If you can get over your bigotry it’s easily the best “How It’s Made” style deep dives into mundane technology and how it’s integrated in our lives.
My point was the daft “british kettle”, as if the uk is the only place where people know that electricity can heat water…
Knowing that the usa is the worst thing to happen to earth in the last fucking large amount of years, is not bigotry, it’s just common sense.
Should he refer to a kettle from Britain as a foreign kettle? Genuinely, what way of referencing it would have been unobjectionable to you here?
The electric nature of the kettle isn’t what makes it abnormal for Americans (it might not be owned by every household, but people aren’t generally surprised or confused by them), it’s because Britain has 240V and the US has 120V electricity in most outlets, so American electric kettles take longer to boil water.
Damn, just unsubscribed. They’re had some good videos.
For context it is minimal. They give detail in the video
What it means for me is I find a Youtuber I like and cling to them for dear life. It also means if I really do want to learn something, I’ll find a better source than youtube–like a podcast specializing in that subject area, or even, dare I say, a book.
Me, be it Youtube, movies or music, I only consume pre-AI content. That way I’m sure it’s man-made.
At my age, I tend to be a bit stuck in the past anyway. So it’s not like I’m missing out on new stuff that interests me, because new stuff rarely interests me.
Haha, you’re over 30 too, huh? I know that feeling
You can’t be sure. There’s plenty of deep fake stuff out there of people that died before AI was even around. Alan Watts, for instance.
If you’re on YouTube, probably a good idea to learn to recognize slop, or at least avoid likely slop even if you can’t determine if it is slop definitively.
Oh I know slop when I see it. I just don’t want to play guess-the-content.
The stuff I watch or listen to is either very well known, or it’s so obscure that nobody is going to make deep fake of it.
Like every other form of entertainment, you can choose quality content or you can choose total garbage. We all know the garbage du jour is going to get a ton of views, because it always has. There are still amazing channels on YouTube. Shout-out to Astrum.
I think you’re missing a few things that are different about AI than just bad content, which has always been and will always be with us.
First, there’s just so damn much of it.
Second, it can quickly steal a topic or a theme. So you might have a video that starts to break out and it will immediately be mined and copied by 50 other channels, all of which, because they put out a video a day, have more followers than you. And third, just AI existing is poisoning the well. Even if you are talking into a camera while juggling, people might suspect your script is AI…
Coco melon, tablet generation, COVID interrupted, influencer culture, AI highschool…
…and I still feel like this generation will turn out fine. This generation seems highly socially connected. They can find out pretty much anything they want, and there are hobbies galore.
Each generation shits on the previous generation, and eats up media claiming they’re a broken generation… But things don’t have to be that way.
you sound like ai
You sound like a fucking idiot.
you sound like a, without the i
Nnnnnnoooooooooo!!! I was on a roll checking things off my todo list and then I found this… Gaaaah. Back to procrastinating I guess. 🍿
