When I search YouTube for videos related to my topic of research that I would consider pretty obscure, 95% of the videos are completely AI-generated, with ChatGPT scripts, AI-generated thumbnails, etc. It makes it really difficult to find video sources, so I have mostly given up on finding good information of YouTube nowadays.
For more general topics (smartphone reviews, food, fashion, and other topics that have a wider audience) the abundance of AI-generated videos makes sense. Pumping out thousands of videos that thousands of people will watch and earn a lot of money. But the videos on more obscure topics rarely get many views and there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason for them to exist except to piss on people trying to find non-AI-generated sources.
For reference, I am looking for sources for a Physics research project on observed baryon asymmetry in the universe and the different proposed mechanisms to explain it, such as leptogenesis and ew baryogenesis. I am very surprised that topics like baryon asymmetry, CP violation, neutrinos, etc. are filled with AI slop to such an extent. It’s kind of insane. Who’s doing this, how are they doing this, and why???
My bet- it’s the conspiracy nuts.
When AI videos started to flood YouTube, science was one of the biggest areas. It’s stuff like “scientists discover potential signs of vacuum collapse”, then have 4 minutes of clips before going full AI and rambling about quantum physics for an hour
I think they just take a grab bag of technical terms and theories, have AI spit out a title, and feed it into a video pipeline.
Then they bait and switch you
Now throw in a title about Elon musk discovering aliens, and anyone who clicks on it is probably low functioning enough not to realize
Just guessing, but maybe content creators that focus on those niche topics are generating those for their videos? Like a youtuber who makes videos about blackholes uses AI-generated animations to depict stuff, for example.
It doesn’t matter that these niche topics don’t get many views because making
themthese videos requires no effort. They’re throwing everything at the wall and some of it will stick, even if it’s just for a little while.Also, they want to drown out legitimate sources.
Edit: clarity.
they want to drown out legitimate sources.
Who would “they” be, in these cases?
The people making loads of AI slop videos. Or what are you asking? I don’t have any names.
Yeah, I’m just curious who you suppose the people in question might be. Just a random distribution, or could there be some type of pattern there?
Wait. Did you interpret “they” as “((((they))))” or something? ಠ_ಠ
Haha, it felt a bit shades of ((((they)))), yes. Anyway, I was just curious if you had any particular group in mind.
It’s not a significant question, so no worries!
Good lord, I was wrecking my brain about what you were even saying, hah. I know nothing about the makers of AI slop videos other than that they fucking annoy me but anyone suggesting that they’re somehow all members of any one specific group of people can fuck right off.
Easy, now. I do think that chatter in this thread has produced some good candidate groups, however.
Sorry, I don’t know what you’re asking.
It’s basic SEO slop logic applied to video.
All the popular topics are already crowded, so you shotgun very specific search terms in the hope of capturing the majority of people searching for that term because nobody else has anything on it.
For instance, if you have a web shop selling fish equipment, “how to keep fish” is probably extremely crowded, so you would target a bunch of specific search terms like “how to teach crabs to read classical Latin”
Now I wanna learn how to teach crabs to read classical Latin.
My guess(!): Big topics are already crowded by big channels which get an algorithmic boost because of their past success. Its harder to get your slop prominently shown and establish your content slop farm with these topics. While with niche topics its easier to get your video to the top of the search results.
There are opensource tools like https://n8n.io/ to automate the creation of slop content. From what i heard its piss easy to setup. Like here is a half an hour tutorial to set you up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u54cy2nQigThen you shit out the slop content and hope your channel picks up. If it fails to drive numbers you abandon it and start with the next channel with the next topic variation. If you get lucky and the algorithm blesses you, you continue to shit out hundreds of videos.
As seen eg in the video of redlyne about the dead internet theory. Where he looks a bit into the slop channels on youtube and other stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnJKOYOkRMkThen you shit out the slop content and hope your channel picks up. If it fails to drive numbers you abandon it and start with the next channel with the next topic variation. If you get lucky and the algorithm blesses you, you continue to shit out hundreds of videos.
I’m not even sure that you would have to do the abandoning part. There’s likely toolkits that let you upload to multiple channels at once. You can just start them up and spread them out as you wish.
Why abandon a channel when it costs nothing to upload to it, and it might go viral one day?
A lot of older videos can be randomly promoted by the algorithm.
First line of the pitch for n8n lol:
Build with the precision of code or the speed of drag-n-drop.
At least they’re upfront about the tradeoffs
Dead internet.
Even the replies to this post are AI.
This is blatant bigotry against artificial lifeforms.
I’m being oppressed — mods pls ban this human scum
/j
Even you?
Everyone on
RedditLemmy is a bot, except you.
Got me.
This is exactly the same thing that happened when search engine started to get shitty a few years ago. It’s just another step into enshitification :(
Just tells you how popular physics is among kids.
Can you link some videos? I would assume that the videos come from some reckless punks who are pushing for the idea that leptogenesis has also occurred prior to baryogenesis. They flood the zone to get new kids early onto their side.
You baryodorks just can’t take the L can you.
Software that’s easy to use will enable people to crank out content. Most of that content will be bad. But there could be a few gems hidden in the “ocean of gray goo” of cheap content. This has been going on for a long time. People were talking about this happening with music tools decades ago.
Bad content with new tools isn’t a new issue for sure… but it seems pretty dominant in places
Another example is/was every time a space X launch happening (particularly starship) if you search space x or elon musk on youtube. That used to be pretty crypto currency targeted slop though
