{"id":140946,"date":"2025-10-23T16:58:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T16:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/140946\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T16:58:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T16:58:16","slug":"the-man-who-makes-ai-slop-by-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/140946\/","title":{"rendered":"The Man Who Makes AI Slop by Hand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mu is not the only comedian who has tried to imitate the style of AI-generated videos, but he really nails all of the elements: The clumsy bodily movements, the spaced-out facial expressions, and the unpredictable plot development. Many viewers, me included, were shocked at how accurately he captured the essence of AI slop videos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mu tells me that the half-dozen AI imitation videos he has filmed represent only a small part of his acting career. He has wanted to be an actor since college and spent the summer after his freshman year at Hengdian World Studios\u2014the world\u2019s largest film studio\u2014looking for background acting opportunities. He started making comedy sketches on Chinese social media in 2019, and content creation now takes up most of his time.<\/p>\n

The success of his AI imitation videos earned him a sponsorship deal from a Chinese generative AI company, which paid him 80,000 RMB (about $11,000) to produce two more sketches promoting the company\u2019s video model. That\u2019s not a bad gig, but I honestly expected Mu to have received more opportunities through his global virality.<\/p>\n

As part of the sponsorship, Mu shot two versions of the sketches, one that embedded AI-generated footage and one without it. He was secretly hoping that the advertiser would choose the latter, because it showcases human acting skills front and center. But the advertiser chose the one with the AI. \u201cThat kind of feels like it\u2019s starting to steal jobs from human actors, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d Mu says.<\/p>\n

Mu popped up on my timeline again last week when he released a sequel<\/a> to his first AI imitation series, this time mimicking the videos created by Sora<\/a>, OpenAI\u2019s latest generative video tool. His new video is much more subtle but still manages to nail that unexplainably unsettling feeling that has endured even as AI videos become more advanced.<\/p>\n

Mu says there is a perpetual battle underway as AI accelerates, but it\u2019s not man versus machine. Rather, the clash is between humans and other humans who make AI models, and each side is constantly trying to one up the other. \u201cWe\u2019re poking fun at some of AI\u2019s flaws, its eeriness and absurdity, but the AI creators are probably improving those, too. You see, this year\u2019s AI already looks much more human,\u201d Mu says.<\/p>\n

How to Act Like AI<\/p>\n

Before he made his first AI imitation sketch in July 2024, Mu watched a lot of AI slop videos to study their common traits. He wanted to understand the kinds of mistakes AI often makes and then re-create them in his own scripts.<\/p>\n

For example, when an object appears in the frame, AI often misunderstands its purpose for being there. For example, a hanger can be used to hang clothes, but it\u2019s also often the weapon of choice when parents in China physically punish their children. That dual use inspired another one<\/a> of Mu\u2019s videos last year, where midway through pretending to hit his \u201cson\u201d with a hanger, the boy\u2019s shorts mysteriously come off, and Mu looks like he suddenly forgot what he\u2019s doing and decided to hang up the shorts instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mu is not the only comedian who has tried to imitate the style of AI-generated videos, but he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,595,289,290,381,1987,18,19,2926,17,76542,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-140946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-art","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-content-creators","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-influencers","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-made-in-china","19":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115424546194378082","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}