We’ve been seeing AI photos taking over Facebook, and now the videos are getting so good, and so easy to generate, that they’re fooling people. Wired has a new report about how so much of the AI slop on YouTube features celebrities, particularly hero-like celebrities telling off liberals. They found over 100 channels with this type of ragebait content, most of which are cobbled together with a mix of real clips and voiceovers describing fake scenarios. To be fair to YouTube, they took down over 30 channels when they were reported, however I’m sure Wired has more sway than the average person reporting a channel. I found some of the channels mentioned by Wired which were still peddling ridiculously fake stories. Here’s some of Wired’s report, with much more at the source.

“These videos are what we might call ‘cheapfakes’ rather than deepfakes, as they’re cobbled together from a motley selection of real images and videoclips, with a basic AI voice-over and subtitles,” explains Simon Clark, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Bristol, who specializes in AI-generated misinformation. “At a superficial level, we might be surprised that people would be fooled by something this unsophisticated. But actually there are sound psychological factors at play here,” he adds, explaining that the videos typically focus on rhetorical techniques that encourage audiences to abandon critical thinking skills by calling to emotion.

A WIRED investigation found 120 YouTube channels employing similar tactics. With misleading names like Starfame, Media Buzz, and Celebrity Scoop, they camouflage themselves alongside real compilation clips from shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Today With Jenna & Friends to gain credibility. Their channel descriptions give the illusion of melodramatic tabloid outlets—some bury their AI-disclaimers under walls of text emphasizing “all the best highlights” or “the most unforgettable, hilarious, and iconic moments,” while others omit them entirely to add to the flair.

YouTube updated its policies on July 15 in a move to crack down on content made with generative AI. The platform’s Help Center stipulates that content eligible for monetization must adhere to YouTube’s requirements of being sufficiently “authentic” and “original”—but there is no outright mention of generative AI alongside it, with the policy simply stating that eligible content must “be your original creation” and “not be mass-produced or repetitive.” A separate policy on “disclosing use of altered or synthetic content” states that creators must disclose when content “makes a real person appear to say or do something they didn’t do,” “alters footage of a real event or place,” or “generates a realistic-looking scene that didn’t actually occur.”

WIRED reached out to YouTube for comment on more than 100 AI-generated celebrity fanfic channels, as well as clarification on how YouTube’s new policies would be enforced.

“All content uploaded to YouTube must comply with our Community Guidelines, regardless of how it is generated. If we find that content violates a policy, we remove it,” Zayna Aston, director of YouTube EMEA communications said in a statement to WIRED. Aston also reiterated that channels employing deceptive practices are not permitted on the platform, including those using misleading metadata, titles, and thumbnails.

WIRED can also confirm that 37 of the flagged celebrity talk show and other fan-fiction-style channels were removed, chiefly those without AI disclaimers and some with the most egregious channel names, such as Celebrity Central and United News.

[From Wired]

Whenever I try to look up videos of Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan on YouTube, I get recommended disgusting videos hating on them for profit, some real and some AI-generated. There are also positive-seeming AI-generated videos featuring their children’s rendered faces, which they’ve taken pains to shield from the public. On some videos I checked, the comments point out that the videos are fake and AI-generated. On other AI videos the comments are mostly bot-generated and positive with lots of emojis. Incidentally, on the few occasions I’ve opened up our YouTube podcast videos to comments, the first comments we get are from bots.

There’s a much larger conversation to be had here, about the dead Internet and the erosion of truth and reality. It’s hard to tell what’s real lately, and doing research takes longer and is much more confusing than it was 10 to 15 years ago. All of that is by design, and we’ve seen the current administration try to degrade truth and history to prop up white supremacy. AI needs more safeguards and regulations, but you know that’s not going to happen at the federal level for a while. (An early version of the new budget bill attempted to block states from regulating AI, however that section thankfully did not make it into the final bill.) At the very least, AI needs to have clear and unambiguous labels across all platforms. We also need to educate all generations about how to recognize this type of content and not get sucked into ragebait.

Photo note: I was going to include screenshots from some of these channels but they were so disturbing and misleading that I decided not to. Many were racist, homophobic, declared still-living celebrities dead and used AI-generated thumbnails of celebrities with deformities.

Here’s one with an obvious typo. Clooney is of course still very much with us.

WIRED found over 100 YouTube channels using AI to create lazy fanfiction-style videos. Despite being obviously fake, there’s a psychological reason people are falling for them. https://t.co/pscHbVce9b

— WIRED (@WIRED) August 15, 2025

Header photo credit: Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels