Hear me out.
AI-generated video is good for society because it will break the internet and push us out of our algorithmic echo chambers to the clean air of the real world.
What would be good for society is if the internet was greatly minimized in public life or went away altogether.
Seeing SORA 2 work upon culture the past couple weeks gives a glimpse of how the internet is at serious risk.
With increasing fidelity and realism, AI-generated video has made more waves in the past year than almost any other technology. Politics, entertainment, and commerce are all about to pivot upon the axis of computer-generated multimedia.
Trusting sources, digital epistemology and citizenship, algorithmic bias—these and more ways of being are about to become conversation points around AI.
These conversations are pointless.
Source confirmation and fact-checking will be said to be solvable by technological means that create worse problems with which to contend.
Digital epistemology will be taught by online personalities, warping educational content around an entertainment-first medium.
Algorithmic bias is unfixable in the attention economy.
What has begun—and will continue to occur—amidst theorizing whether a helicopter crash or Jake Paul makeup or a presidential dance move is real or generated is the slow and full breakdown of trust in anything digital.
Around 50% of articles online are AI-generated in 2025.
1.5 trillion AI-generated photos were uploaded to Facebook in 2023.
AI-generated video stats will come out next year about the overwhelm of reality online.
These stats, based on current reaction and anecdotal evidence online, could point to the end of belief in seeing. No longer would anyone accept an article, soundbite, or video as proof. Every video—no matter the quality or source—will be seen as the moon landing footage has come to be seen: questionable, murky in origin, and doubted by more viewers with every technological manipulation we experience through our screens.
A wonderful outcome from this would be the removal of the internet from public life. News organizations and government processes could return to analog mediums, and educational systems and businesses could seek solutions that aren’t so enmeshed with our devices. The decline of trust in online mediums could spark a rise of trust and goodwill, as has already largely been seen in recent dumb-phone and analog-tech mini-revolutions—older forms of technology that aren’t so affected by AI-generated content.
This pendulum swing could manifest in a renaissance of people searching for truth in the classics and great wisdom traditions, or from their neighbors and nature, or within themselves and the contemplative practices of deep spirituality…
Or the paranoia and polarization will continue to mount as the world becomes a more startling reflection of the black mirror our devices become when the technological world breaks…