A YouTube Video Created with Generative AI Made Me Mad
I even had to investigate how much of the video was created by generative AI tools.
All I wanted was to watch a short video on YouTube, but the algorithm had other plans. It recommended a video about the “cannibalistic Harkonnen harpies” from Dune: Part Two.
Well, those characters were criminally underrepresented in the movie. And the video has a couple of thousand views, too. Why not? My dinner will get cold if I keep loitering.
I clicked without any intention of watching the full video. As someone who didn’t read Herbert’s book, I merely wanted to check if it was something from the source material. I stayed until the end but for all the wrong reasons.
What exactly is wrong?
Basically, everything. The first thing to catch my ear was the AI-generated female voice. The next was my eyes: the video itself was a collection of stills from the trailer and promotional materials for Dune 2. It occasionally showed low-resolution screenshots from a CamRip (I just know).
I ruminated on this for a bit, with the video playing in the background of my mind. Then, the artificial voice pierced through the fog:
In this video, I’d like to explore the significance of these cannibal darlings within the context of Villeneuve’s adaptation, their alignment with the source material and the ways in which they complement a few fascinating elements present in Herbert’s original work.
Why does this sound like a by-the-books blog post written in ChatGPT? I checked the number of views on the video—over 300,000 in just a few weeks. OK, surely this can’t be the case.
While he could easily delegate the task of feeding them to any of the numerous Harkonnen attendants at his disposal, he personally undertakes this duty himself, perhaps driven by a twisted sense of romantic affection or responsibility.
Oh my God… This can’t be. I read the meta description of the video.
An exploration of the significance of Feyd Rautha’s cannibal darlings within the context of Villeneuve’s adaptation, their alignment with the source material and the ways in which they compliment a few fascinating elements present in Herbert’s original work.
This description is obviously AI-written. However, many creators outsource their meta-descriptions and SEO to ChatGPT. Right?
I checked the number of likes. It’s over 10,000 likes and only about 650 dislikes—I installed the Return YouTube Dislike plugin to see that (this is not an ad). It's a perfectly fine ratio. Doesn’t that mean the video should not be complete trash?
But the lifeless female voice carried on:
However, given his apparent enjoyment of pain as portrayed in the film, it’s not far-fetched to speculate that he might indulge in such activities with these vile and violent beings, who themselves likely enjoy dishing out pain during any such intimate interactions.
I already realized what I’d gotten myself into. Perhaps I could’ve ended the video there, but I was unable to because I was fighting an impending cardiac arrest.
Despite his penchant for violence, he manifests an underlying sense of honor and duty.
This video was entirely made in AI.
Everything—the information, the script, the voiceover, the meta-description, the title — was artificial. Let’s be real. The idea behind this YouTube video was probably generated in ChatGPT, too.
Engaging in such behavior no doubt has warped their mind. Their minds have obviously regressed to a primitive state, devoid of rational thought or moral restraint.
Oh, f*k off! It’s my mind that is obviously regressing. Before it reached the vegetative estate, I had to analyze the video.
How was this AI monstrosity created: an investigation
The video’s creator, who I expect is an organic human being (or even several humans), may have done some actual work. I tried to recreate the script to see exactly how much.
The hardest part was describing the scenes in the movie to the AI for analysis. Unless the author used one of the web-based LLMs like I just did with Gemini:
Far from perfect and I had to write an entire sentence, but it’s a good start. Moving on.
The video draws parallels between the harpies in the film—something absent in the books—and the source material. Please, take note of this part:
In the book, this fact is made evident by their employment of the twisted mentat Piter de Vries, who was trained by the Bene Tleilax to operate outside of standard moral parameters.
Do you think the author actually browsed the web or read the book? God, no. He/she/they just asked the AI to do the research. Allegedly.
To test my theory, I wrote the following prompt to the CGPT:
And what do you think? Even the initial input was nearly identical to the script of the video.
Look at that suffocative word salad of overused adjectives and adverbs. The tedious bloatness of it.
Oh my God!… It even has a segment about the Bene Tleilax and “the twisted mentat” Piter de Vries!
Was there ANY creative effort at all?
The author of the video did some actual manual effort. It probably consisted of:
- Writing prompts for the CGPT
- Getting pictures from the movie that wasn’t released (from trailer, promos, and an illegal theater recording)
- Designing the thumbnail
- Copy-pasting the script text into an AI voice generator
- Editing the images together and applying basic video editing effects (zoom in/out, pan outs/ins, etc.)
OK, I’m overestimating the amount of effort put into this. To save precious time and effort, the author probably used an AI photo-to-video tool like Fliki.
You can actually create a bullsh*t 5-minute lore video about a trending game or a film based on your CGPT-generated script and a few images without wasting a single cent. Or a shedding single drop of sweat. And you’ll probably get hundreds of thousands of views.
Let’s conclude before I kill myself
So, is AI a cancerous disease that will kill human creativity? No.
Artificial intelligence in itself is NOT a problem — it actually powers a lot of the things you use daily. AI works behind the scenes on all websites, apps, and services you use. It automates repetitive tasks, like content moderation and payment, delivers personalized recommendations, and prevents fraud and spam.
Generative AI is good, actually. I consider it something like a calculator for writers. An assistant. I can outsource brainstorming and summarizing tasks to ChatGPT. Research is made easier with LLMs, provided you double-check the findings. I also love to use AI tools to play around with words or refine sentences for clarity.
But the video in question… How do I put it?
I guess, the use of generative AI by YouTube creators underscores the inherent selfishness, greed, and moral decay in which they are willing to go to great lengths to undermine actual creative effort in order to make easy money completely and utterly shamelessly, all of which subtly hints at a significant role in the eventual downfall of human creativity, further reinforced by the diminishing quality of the platform’s offerings.
In other words, the lack of human touch and creativity turned the video into “content” in the worst possible meaning of the word. Please don’t ever do that. It’s shit.
Kashadoo (Organic Ukrainist/Punished Ukrainian), or Georgii, is a seasoned technical copywriter and ex-prosecutor from Ukraine. When not working, he usually writes nonsense on Twitter or plays indie games. When non discussing god-knows-what, he will write about the russo-Ukrainian war and Western perceptions of Ukraine and russia.
