TikTok, Facebook and other social media platforms are flooded with creepy and bizarre content generated using artificial intelligence (AI), from fake videos of US government catches vampires to pictures of the shrimp Jesus.
Given its alien nature and its weak connection to reality, one might think that this so-called “AI flop“ would disappear quickly. However, there are not any signs of abating.
In fact, our research suggests that any such low-quality AI-generated content is becoming a lucrative enterprise – for the individuals who create it, for the platforms that host it, and even for a growing industry of middlemen teaching others get in on the AI gold rush.
When generative AI meets profiteers and platforms
The short explanation for the proliferation of those confusing videos and pictures is that savvy developers on social media platforms have discovered make quick money using generative AI tools.
But the story is more complex. Platforms have created incentive programs for content that goes viral, and a whole ecosystem of content creators has emerged using generative AI to use those programs.
Much of the discussion about generative AI tools focuses on how they permit peculiar people to “create“Many earlier digital technologies have also made it easier to take part in creative activities, for instance, smartphones have made photography ubiquitous.
But generative AI goes a step further, as it could possibly generate tailored images or videos from an easy text input. It makes content creation more accessible – and likewise opens the floodgates for mass production on social media.
To give only one example: If you seek for “Pet Dance MotorcycleOn TikTok, yow will discover lots of of AI-generated videos of animals performing the “motorcycle dance,” all animated using the identical AI template. Some accounts post dozens of such videos each day.
Developers and platforms earn money
You could also be wondering why such repetitive, uninspired content can go viral on TikTok. The answer lies within the platform own advice To aspiring creators: If you wish your videos to get promoted, it’s best to “constantly share fresh and varied content” that “doesn’t require a big production budget.”
You might also wonder why some platforms don’t ban AI accounts for polluting the platform's content stream. Other platforms, resembling Spotify and YouTube, which monitor mental property rights more aggressively than TikTok, invest significant resources in Identify and take away AI-generated content.
TikTok Community Guidelines prohibit “inaccurate, misleading, or false content which will cause significant harm,” but AI-generated content isn’t considered – no less than not currently – to be content that causes “significant harm.”
Instead, any such content has turn out to be necessary to platforms. Many of those “Pet Dance Motorcycle” videos, for instance, have been viewed thousands and thousands of times. As long as users scroll through the videos, they’re exposed to promoting, which is the platforms' foremost income.
Insights into the AI gold rush
Additionally, there may be a growing industry where people teach others generate profits from low-cost AI content.
Take, for instance, Xiaonan, a social media entrepreneur we interviewed who runs six different TikTok accounts, each with greater than 100,000 followers. As he revealed in a live-streamed tutorial with greater than 1,000 viewers, Xiaonan earned greater than $5,500 from TikTok in July alone.
Xiaonan also hosts an exclusive chat group where, for a fee, he shares his simplest AI prompts, video captions, and hashtags tailored to different platforms like YouTube and Instagram. Xiaonan also shares tricks to face out within the platform advice game and circumvent platform regulations.
Xiaonan says he began his “AI side hustle” after being laid off from a web company. He now works with two partners who sell courses and tutorials on creating AI-generated videos and other sorts of spam for profit.
The authors who publish AI content might not be the type of people we expect. As Xiaonan told us, most of the participants in his AI tutorial titled “Side Job, Self-Employment, High Pay” are housewives, unemployed people and students.
“Some of us also drive for Uber or do street vending,” one YouTuber told us. AI-generated content is the most recent trend to earn a side income.
The rise of AI coincided with global unemployment trends and the expansion of the gig economy within the post-pandemic era.
According to a author who can be a stay-at-home mom, creating AI-generated content is a more enjoyable job than driving passengers or delivering food. It's easy to learn, costs almost nothing, and will be done at home anytime with only a phone.
His method, in keeping with Xiaonan, is to make use of AI to “monetize the productivity gap” – that’s, by producing way more content than individuals who don’t use AI.
The global AI-generated content factory
From our observations, a lot of these developers come from non-Western countries resembling India, Vietnam and China.
A Chinese social media influencer told us:
The Chinese short video market is approaching saturation, which suggests you’ve gotten to look to foreign platforms for traffic (viewers).
For these entrepreneurs, AI isn’t only the key sauce for creating viral content, but in addition for distributing already viral videos across different countries and platforms.
One effective strategy mentioned by one developer is a type of platform arbitrage with popular videos from Douyin, the counterpart to TikTok in mainland China.
A creator takes considered one of these videos, adds an AI-generated translation, and posts the result to TikTok. Despite clunky AI dubbing and faulty subtitles, a lot of these videos garner lots of of hundreds and even thousands and thousands of views.
Creators often mute the unique video and add an AI-generated narration that translates the content into various languages, including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian and Swedish. These creators often manage several and even dozens of accounts and goal viewers in numerous countries using a technique often called an “account matrix.”
This is just the start
We are only initially of a mainstream culture of AI-generated content. Soon we are going to face a situation where content is virtually infinite, but human attention remains to be limited.
The challenge for platforms is to balance the engagement these AI-driven trends bring with the necessity to keep up trust and authenticity.
Social media will soon respond. But before that, AI-generated content will proceed to grow rapidly – no less than for some time.
