I scrolled past this add a few times before paying any attention to it. But then it gave off an uncanny valley feeling that made me look a little closer. I think it was the very staged first question that bothered me most, and yesterday I finally took the time to watch it through a critical lens. It’s an ad for a Tai Chi app, but I cropped the video to hide the brand because I don’t want to amplify it, I want to critique it.
And here are a list of telltale things that suggest it is AI.
1. Look at the opening image. The woman is talking at a 90° angle to the stage, and there is no one at the podium below her.
2. The ‘expert’ is a perfectly chiseled man who is never named. No recognition of him as an expert in the field… because he’s fictitious.
3. Obviously fake audience members. The first image shows a blurred bearded man who doesn’t seem real to me. The second image has a man wearing a partial microphone like the expert.
4. The painfully fake script.
“Isn’t a gym better?”
“Gym doesn’t work after 40.”
This isn’t necessarily evidence of AI, it could just be bad writing, but it comes off feeling very wrong and unnatural. It’s like there was an intent in the text to make the expert sound like English is his second language but his voice doesn’t carry that same suggestion.
5. Comments are turned off. There is no benefit in having viewers outing the ad as fake. It’s better to allow the ad to fool more people without being called out.
The reality is that I could pick this ad out as fake, but that’s only because it was done poorly. We are going to see a lot more ads done this way and they are going to be good enough to fool us completely. It’s just a matter of time, and that time is approaching very quickly.
