I had a brief introduction to creating videos with artificial intelligence while driving back from UpIsland recently with my youngest child, Ellis. As we chatted about social media and cellphones, Ellis typed a prompt into Sora, a new A.I. video generator. In a minute or so he had a realistic-appearing clip of a police officer conducting a traffic stop in which the driver of the car is a German shepherd. The cop tells the dog to get its paw off the shifter. Then the video ends. On a quick glance there was nothing obviously fake about it.
For now, A.I. is wonky enough that there are clues, for example in a video I saw today, A.I. hands were making typing motions on a keyboard but only hitting the space bar. One has to look closely, and the technology is improving quickly. Less than a year ago, A.I. could scarcely render hands at all.
In other recent news, a change to the app formerly known as Twitter revealed that a number of prominent political accounts, including many Make America Great Again voices with thousands of followers, apparently were being run from outside the United States. One, cited by Axios, @American, appeared based in Pakistan. Another, with an American flag in the account name with more than 50,000 followers, operated from Nigeria. X, Twitter’s new name since Elon Musk bought it, turned the location feature off almost as soon as users discovered it.
Ellis did not have much of an answer after I asked him what he thought humankind might turn to now that the already shallow credibility of the internet is draining away to nothing. Wishfully, I had a vision of people sitting around a campfire, one person with a guitar, singing a Bob Dylan number — real interaction in the real world. Ellis had nothing to say about that, though I am sure it gave him something to think about for the rest of the ride to Amagansett.