{"id":1113509,"date":"2026-07-27T04:00:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T04:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1113509\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T04:00:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T04:00:35","slug":"ai-has-ruined-cute-animal-videos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1113509\/","title":{"rendered":"AI has ruined cute animal videos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not just political material, either. Earlier this year, a parody of the reality TV show Love Island starring sexualised, AI-generated talking fruit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/audio\/play\/p0n73k76\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">racked up millions of views<\/a>. The attention on &#8220;Fruit Love Island&#8221; was short lived, but it raised questions about the future of entertainment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A lot of this only worked because there was something original to reference,&#8221; Maddox says. &#8220;The joke only lands because there&#8217;s a real Love Island.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Still, Maddox expects some large number of people will enjoy AI animal videos, and the AI content that follows it. But there could be more significant consequences.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A cutesy dystopia?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;On the internet, sometimes the cute and the innocent is the gateway to more harmful,&#8221; Maddox says.<\/p>\n<p>AI content isn&#8217;t limited to animals, of course. If we get used to fabricated cats and the rest of the AI menagerie, Maddox says that same tolerance may extend to more consequential fakes \u2013 like manipulated images of politicians, made-up crime footage and <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-ai-resurrects-racist-stereotypes-and-disinformation-and-why-fact-checking-isnt-enough-270000\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">racist AI caricatures<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And there could be more immediate casualties: human content creators. People who make a living posting real videos will have to compete with AI opponents who don&#8217;t have to sleep and pump out videos in the blink of an eye. It could make more thoughtful content harder to monetise, and therefore scarcer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>More like this:<br \/><\/strong>\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20251008-truth-terminal-the-ai-bot-that-became-a-real-life-millionaire\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The AI bot that became a real-life millionaire<\/a><strong><br \/><\/strong>\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20260715-how-period-trackers-share-womens-private-details\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">How period trackers share your private details<\/a><strong><br \/><\/strong>\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20260618-the-terrifying-world-of-the-tiktok-farlands\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The unsettling community building the internet&#8217;s future<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Last week my animal-loving friend Ashleigh reposted a video of a man skipping with a big group of dogs, all of them warning matching bandanas. I&#8217;ll admit the video itself looked real. And maybe you could train one dog with a bandana to skip, but 10? I smelled a robot.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh god,&#8221; Ashleigh said when I asked about it. &#8220;I&#8217;m so embarrassed, I never fall for AI.&#8221; She said she just hadn&#8217;t thought about it before sharing the clip. The unpleasant feelings will last much longer than the video. &#8220;It just feels like there&#8217;s no safe place for anything real anymore,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I can&#8217;t trust anything.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>For more insights, sign up to our Tech Decoded newsletter, where Thomas and Lily Jamali break down the biggest stories of the tech world, and help you live a better digital life.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/newsletters?techdecoded\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up for free here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BBCFuture\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/bbcfuture_official\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s not just political material, either. Earlier this year, a parody of the reality TV show Love Island&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1113510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,3907,1942,10282,303587,1426,53,16,15],"class_list":["post-1113509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-article","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-future","tag-keeping-tabs-tag-technology-tag-internet-tag-animal-tag-artificialintelligence-tag-social-media-tag-psychology-tag-brain-tag-thomas-germain-tag-features","tag-story","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116989947182599772","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1113509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1113510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1113509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1113509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1113509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}