Intrusive Thought of the Day: Is That YouTube Video Enhanced With AI?

In recent years, the online landscape has gradually filled up with content featuring a specific style and a particularly disturbing visual aesthetic: whether it's videos or images, it's usually quite easy to discern whether or not they are generative in nature. Recognizing the hand of artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly rapid, especially when depicting “human” subjects. 

In robotics, the engineering discipline that deals with the creation and operation of robots, there is a concept called the “Uncanny Valley” that precisely describes how the excessive resemblance of a robotic subject to human appearance generates feelings of repulsion and unease. This phenomenon originally occurred when faced with anthropomorphic automatons and similar designs, but with the advent of AI, most artificially generated visual content evokes the same reaction.

Currently, several YouTubers have reported some unexpected details in their own videos: unnaturally smooth skin, more defined wrinkles on clothes, lights and shadows different from how they were originally set—unrealistic aspects that cause a sensation similar to the phenomenon mentioned above. The reason? YouTube is testing a feature to “artificially enhance” content on the platform.