Gen Alpha, the Antichrist, and a Terrible, No-Good, Very Bad AI Video Generator

OpenAI recently released Sora 2, an AI video generation app with social features built in. These features allow you to insert yourself and your friends into short-form videos once you've all uploaded your avatars and trained the model on your voices.

Social media response has been overwhelmingly negative, if my feeds are any indication. Nearly every post on Twitter (X) and Reddit, outside of echo chambers like /r/DefendingAIArt, are negative. And the few positive posts (which are mostly from OpenAI employees) are filled with comments about how Sora 2 is the latest psyop from the antichrist (either Peter Thiel or Sam Altman, depending on who you ask.)

For what it's worth, I agree with the general sentiment. I feel a heavy revulsion to these AI-generated slop reels. Not necessarily for philosophical reasons, like the elimination of humanity from creation seeming fundamentally perverse—although that is a factor as well. My main concern is the fact that these models are clearly optimizing to capture the same user base as TikTok addicts: the terminally online scrollers. Unindividuated beasts of burden, driven by impulse and mindless consumerism. People who need, in the words of Tim Dillon, "little dumb things to keep them from falling into mania."

There is a litany of scientific literature proving the addictive nature of TikTok, Reels, and other short-form content. The Sora videos I've seen take the worst attributes of TikTok and amplify them. Go watch a few and you'll know exactly what I mean. If TikTok is crack cocaine, then Sora is fentanyl.

While extreme TikTok usage isn't good, it still retains some element of humanity. Creators have to make their own videos if they wish to reach an audience, which naturally leaves some trace of authenticity. The audience reciprocates, sharing and commenting on the videos. There is at least some facsimile of a cultural exchange going on, however diluted it may be.

Digital culture has now reached a point where your choice of content is between a twenty-second video of a new grad crying into her cell phone camera about the realities of full-time work, or endless AI-generated videos of fat boulder-wielding tourists committing acts of terrorism on glass bridges, further eroding Boomers' sense of reality and wasting everyone else's time.

I really want to hope that TikTok is the furthest these people will go with their scrolling, but only time will tell if they have the capacity to rise above the slopstream.

Ultimately, I think Gen Alpha and Gen Beta will determine the long-term viability of AI-generated content. After any paradigm shift, it's up to the next youngest generation to decide if it will metastasize or fade away. If these generations normalize AI-generated content and have no natural revulsion, the technology will last forever. But if they do have a revulsion to it and instead choose to prioritize human-created content, the technology will fade into obscurity.

Let's hope they don't become acclimated.