All AI Videos Are Harmful (2025)

Scope of Harm: Propaganda, Fraud, and “Synthetic Reality”

• Many focus on AI video as a powerful propaganda tool: scalable psyops, political manipulation, and “AI slop” channels impersonating public figures or experts.
• A core worry is erosion of trust in any video or audio: once everything can be faked, even personal calls or “evidence” become suspect.
• Some argue this distrust is actually healthy: people should have been more skeptical of media long before AI.

Creativity vs. Tools: Does AI Remove or Enable Art?

• Critics say AI automates the “craft” (shooting, editing, color, composition), where creativity actually lives, turning people into prompt-writers and devaluing years of skill-building.
• Supporters frame AI as a tool like cameras, DAWs, synthesizers, or CGI: it can speed boilerplate, lower technical barriers, and free more people to focus on story and ideas.
• There’s repeated emphasis that the best AI work still involves human scripting, editing, directing, and taste; raw prompting produces generic slop.

Authenticity, Process, and the “Aimbot” Analogy

• One camp likens AI to an aimbot in games: bypassing the hard, meaningful part of learning an artform; the fun and value lie in the struggle and craft.
• Others respond that in “single-player” contexts (personal songs, private projects) there is no cheating, and emotional impact matters more than method.
• Several note people care deeply about authenticity: ghostwriting, fake DJs, lip-syncing, and now unlabeled AI art feel like deception.

Training Data and “Theft at Scale”

• A strong thread insists all current models depend on mass ingestion of copyrighted creative work without consent; using them is built on industrial-scale appropriation.
• Counterarguments compare this to human influence and sampling; opponents reply that selective human influence is not equivalent to scraping entire corpora.

Democratization vs. Professional Displacement

• Some creatives see AI as “the printing press for film”: finally letting talented but underfunded storytellers make ambitious work without Hollywood budgets or connections.
• Others counter that indie creators already struggle to be discovered; AI will mostly help platforms, labels, and studios vertically integrate and squeeze human workers.

Slop Flood, Ads, and Race to the Bottom

• Many complain about YouTube/TikTok flooded with AI lectures, audiobooks, fake history and fake “found footage,” often unlabeled and low-effort but high-volume.
• AI ad spots are called cheap, uncanny, and trust-eroding; critics doubt savings will reach consumers, expecting higher profits and lower quality instead.
• Some believe recommendation systems will eventually learn to filter AI slop, as they already filter spam; others say current engagement-driven algorithms favor candy over substance.

Misinformation, Vulnerable Audiences, and Futility of Education

• Several describe trying to educate older relatives about AI fakes, finding they often don’t care: they share videos for emotional resonance, not factual accuracy.
• Others argue “vulnerable viewers” shouldn’t be infantilized; people already navigate harms like gambling and tobacco.
• There is broad concern that children and casual users will simply habituate to AI aesthetics and lose any baseline sense of what “real” looks like.

Legitimate and Positive Use-Cases

• Commenters highlight genuinely creative AI videos (music videos, sci‑fi shorts, surreal memes, world-building channels) where human vision and editing dominate.
• Storyboarding, previz, pitching, and genre parody are widely seen as relatively benign or even exciting uses.
• Some limit their own consumption to clearly labeled, obviously fake AI comedy (e.g., absurd animal jobs), while rejecting anything that tries to pass as real.

Regulation, Inevitable Adoption, and Norm Shifts

• A fatalistic group argues the “genie is out”: like cryptography, AI video can’t realistically be banned; focus should be on adaptation, not prohibition.
• Others call for mandatory labeling of AI content and stronger controls around political messaging and deepfakes.
• There’s consensus that AI will become indistinguishable from reality; the debate is whether we can build new norms, filters, and institutions fast enough to cope.