AI video just took a startling leap in realism. Are we doomed?

[C C]

The obligatory comment is located at bottom (that is future anticipation oriented like the "cultural singularity" dread that the article eventually overlaps, where truth and fiction become indistinguishable via the deceptions of AI).

AI video just took a startling leap in realism. Are we doomed?
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/05/ai-video-just-took-a-startling-leap-in-realism-are-we-doomed/

INTRO: Last week, Google introduced Veo 3, its newest video generation model that can create 8-second clips with synchronized sound effects and audio dialog—a first for the company's AI tools. The model, which generates videos at 720p resolution (based on text descriptions called "prompts" or still image inputs), represents what may be the most capable consumer video generator to date, bringing video synthesis close to a point where it is becoming very difficult to distinguish between "authentic" and AI-generated media... (MORE - details)

video link: What is real anymore? (Veo 3 AI Video with sound)

COMMENT: And what seems another incremental step for enhanced simulated reality. Generating and maintaining an entire cosmos is impossible, so the minimalism of only outputting convincing and inter-consistent perceptions of an outer environment for the digital residents, is necessary. Those individual "sensory experiences" kept lawfully coordinated with each other. With the generation of personal thoughts being less so, since there's no devotion to objectivity in that context, anyway.

Adversarial networks constantly critiquing each other will, of course, be the essential addition to such an SR system, since today's trained but still "stupid" AI video/audio complex will flop when it comes to sustained coherence over time. Also, knowledge of what processes yield phenomenal experiences must be acquired -- although digital residents that are philosophical zombies would probably still seem to be performing fine from our "external to that reality" perspective (as if they truly did possess our private manifestations of sensory-related information and thoughts).
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[parmalee]

COMMENT: And what seems another incremental step for enhanced simulated reality. Generating and maintaining an entire cosmos is impossible, so the minimalism of only outputting convincing and inter-consistent perceptions of an outer environment for the digital residents, is necessary. Those individual "sensory experiences" kept lawfully coordinated with each other. With the generation of personal thoughts being less so, since there's no devotion to objectivity in that context, anyway.

Adversarial networks constantly critiquing each other will, of course, be the essential addition to such an SR system, since today's trained but still "stupid" AI video/audio complex will flop when it comes to sustained coherence over time. Also, knowledge of what processes yield phenomenal experiences must be acquired -- although digital residents that are philosophical zombies would probably still seem to be performing fine from our "external to that reality" perspective (as if they truly did possess our private manifestations of sensory-related information and thoughts).
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Hmmm. I was thinking of it's potential here in far more humbler terms--like, say, catering the cinematic and television experience towards one's own mood and disposition in the moment. Suppose you want to watch that episode of MASH in which Hawkeye is traumatized by his experience on a bus wherein a woman is forced to silence her baby by smothering him to death in order to save everyone else on the bus from imminent slaughter, but you just find it too depressing right now. So, you insert a brief scene wherein Bill Burr is also on that bus and he's making wise-ass comments towards the woman about shutting her goddam baby up.

 

[DaveC426913]

Hmmm. I was thinking of it's potential here in far more humbler terms--like, say, catering the cinematic and television experience towards one's own mood and disposition in the moment. Suppose you want to watch that episode of MASH in which Hawkeye is traumatized by his experience on a bus wherein a woman is forced to silence her baby by smothering him to death in order to save everyone else on the bus from imminent slaughter, but you just find it too depressing right now. So, you insert a brief scene wherein Bill Burr is also on that bus and he's making wise-ass comments towards the woman about shutting her goddam baby up.

"Choose your Own Adventure" in the 21st century.


"I like my murder mysteries to have a good dance number."

 

[Sarkus]

Hmmm. I was thinking of it's potential here in far more humbler terms--like, say, catering the cinematic and television experience towards one's own mood and disposition in the moment. Suppose you want to watch that episode of MASH in which Hawkeye is traumatized by his experience on a bus wherein a woman is forced to silence her baby by smothering him to death...

First, to assume the baby was a "he"... poor form.
Second, it was just a chicken. Definitely just a chicken. Nothing wrong with silencing a chicken. Just a chicken. Nothing else to see. These aren't the traumatic scenes you're looking for. Move along. Move along.


Regards AI, the lack of critical thinking skills among the majority of the voting public means, methinks, that, to quote a certain Pvt James Frazer: "we're doomed!"

 

[parmalee]

I posted that before I saw that Loretta Swit had died (RIP). Incidentally, she starred in the second greatest Satanic cult in a desert film, Race with the Devil, alongside Warren Oates, Peter Fonda and Lara Parker (Angelique Collins in Dark Shadows). The NYT stated:

"This is a ridiculous mishmash of a movie for people who never grew up, which is not so say it's for children. One would think that Mr. Fonda and Mr. Oates had better things to do, but perhaps not."

IOW, a masterpiece.

 

[Sarkus]

I posted that before I saw that Loretta Swit had died (RIP). Incidentally, she starred in the second greatest Satanic cult in a desert film, Race with the Devil, alongside Warren Oates, Peter Fonda and Lara Parker (Angelique Collins in Dark Shadows).

Ah, that famous Oscars category: Best Satanic Cult in a Desert film.
I'm assuming "The Devil's Rain" is ahead?

 

[parmalee]

Ah, that famous Oscars category: Best Satanic Cult in a Desert film.
I'm assuming "The Devil's Rain" is ahead?

Surprisingly, there are enough films for it to almost be a legitimate sub-genre. Mostly produced between the mid-60s and mid-70s, but the genre really took off after the Sharon Tate murder and Rosemary's Baby; in fact, one of the films was Whatever Happened to Rosemary's Baby. It also preceded the Satanic Panic in the US by a few years, so Satanism was still a harmless curiosity rather than a manufactured threat. Exploiting the natural beauty of the desert and the minimal need for elaborate set design, these films could be produced fast and cheap. Even Steven Spielberg's second film, Duel, almost counts, as the antagonist is really the truck which appears to have no driver. Then there are the films which could have been improved somewhat had they opted to shoot in the desert over a suburban environment, like Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell.

 

[C C]

Hmmm. I was thinking of it's potential here in far more humbler terms--like, say, catering the cinematic and television experience towards one's own mood and disposition in the moment. Suppose you want to watch that episode of MASH in which Hawkeye is traumatized by his experience on a bus wherein a woman is forced to silence her baby by smothering him to death in order to save everyone else on the bus from imminent slaughter, but you just find it too depressing right now. So, you insert a brief scene wherein Bill Burr is also on that bus and he's making wise-ass comments towards the woman about shutting her goddam baby up.

It has to happen: Streaming services to provide selectable "parallel world" options for plotline events in their programming.

Things will get easier (cheaper) for Star Trek fan productions and Spiderman fan films.

Ed Woods will never know what he missed in the 21st-century, in terms of shortcuts around his struggles to woo investors. Though Roger Corman maybe did get a glimpse before going to the Great Cinema last year. (Nah, at age 98 he was surely out of touch.)

The traditional entertainment industry should definitely pressure for constraints on what creative AI can do for the homegrown user. Otherwise, a major threat from the audience itself, that didn't sign any safeguards for the careers of actors and writers during the last strike.
_

 

[parmalee]

It has to happen: Streaming services to provide selectable "parallel world" options for plotline events in their programming.

Things will get easier (cheaper) for Star Trek fan productions and Spiderman fan films.

Ed Woods will never know what he missed in the 21st-century, in terms of shortcuts around his struggles to woo investors. Though Roger Corman maybe did get a glimpse before going to the Great Cinema last year. (Nah, at age 98 he was surely out of touch.)

The traditional entertainment industry should definitely pressure for constraints on what creative AI can do for the homegrown user. Otherwise, a major threat from the audience itself, that didn't sign any safeguards for the careers of actors and writers during the last strike.
_

For ages everyone's dream was to have access to the master tapes for their favorite recordings, so that they could create their own personalized mixes. Now that's mostly a reality through various AI-driven stem extraction softwares. But you can also find out what "Yellow Submarine" would have sounded like if Frank Sinatra had sung it, or what it would sound like if the Beach Boys had recorded even more of Charles Manson's excellent tunes. Great.

When I was a kid, I inherited a GI Joe and his camper van from an older cousin. But I didn't really like, well, people all that much, so I put GI Joe's combat attire on my Snoopy and gave him the camper van. Somehow that was more satisfying than all of this stuff. Whatever this ineffable and unisolable attribute is that is, presumably, absent from all this AI-driven stuff, making it just so blah seeming--and I don't think I'm alone with this perception--it almost seems as though we are getting even further from it, rather than any nearer.