When I search YouTube for videos related to my topic of research that I would consider pretty obscure, 95% of the videos are completely AI-generated, with ChatGPT scripts, AI-generated thumbnails, etc. It makes it really difficult to find video sources, so I have mostly given up on finding good information of YouTube nowadays.
For more general topics (smartphone reviews, food, fashion, and other topics that have a wider audience) the abundance of AI-generated videos makes sense. Pumping out thousands of videos that thousands of people will watch and earn a lot of money. But the videos on more obscure topics rarely get many views and there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason for them to exist except to piss on people trying to find non-AI-generated sources.
For reference, I am looking for sources for a Physics research project on observed baryon asymmetry in the universe and the different proposed mechanisms to explain it, such as leptogenesis and ew baryogenesis. I am very surprised that topics like baryon asymmetry, CP violation, neutrinos, etc. are filled with AI slop to such an extent. It’s kind of insane. Who’s doing this, how are they doing this, and why???
I guess that’s sort of the whole money making appeal of new AI tools, previously it didn’t make much sense to spend your time and often/usually money to make something if very few would see it, so you focussed on things that get a lot of eyeballs. Now you could more feasibly make something on kind of any topic and not even have to try very hard to do it since it’s pretty well automated. With such low costs, even a tiny return is a positive return and you can just make a lot of stuff.
That said, I would think it still at the moment required someone directing the tools to generate something on a given topic and it does seem pretty unlikely someone trying to pump out videos with ads on any and every topic for a few cents of revenue hoping it all adds up would be able to have conceived of the topics you’re seeing so I guess my theory falls apart there.