YouTuber Cr1tikal Fools Viewers to Show How Good AI Video Has Become

The popular YouTuber known as Cr1TiKaL demonstrated the terrifying power of AI video this week after fooling regular viewers.
Real name Charles Christopher White Jr., Cr1TiKaL is one of the most popular YouTubers on the platform. He uploads daily and is known for his deadpan comedic delivery, where he talks about gaming, politics, and a wide range of subjects.
But on Sunday he uploaded a tech-focused video titled “Are We Completely Cooked.” He starts off by saying, “Now, I’ve seen some dumb s*** in my time … but this takes the goddamn cake.” Or did he?
About two minutes into the video, Cr1TiKaL reveals that the introduction was actually AI-generated. “How many of you even noticed that the first 15 seconds of this video that you’re watching right now was AI-generated,” he says in a mic drop moment.
Cr1TiKaL explains that the intro was AI-generated by a Reddit user, including the script, visuals, and voice. He notes that he did crop out the watermark and zoomed in so viewers couldn’t see the hands which on the original video are a giveaway. AI models still have a hard time getting hands right, it seems.
“If you’re paying enough attention you can see that when my mouth moves it looks a little uncanny,” he adds. “But most probably aren’t coming here with the magnifying glass trying to investigate every single thing they look at.”
It seems that many people were fooled by the AI-generated intro and despite people tuning into his channel every day, regular fans could not tell.
Cr1TiKaL says that just eight months earlier someone made a similar AI-generated clip but it was terrible. That’s how fast things are advancing in the AI video space. “It’s only going to get better until it’s damn near indistinguishable,” he adds.
AI Content is Becoming Popular
Not only is AI video becoming really good at impersonating real life, but it’s also becoming popular in its own right as a medium. You may have noticed a new style of video on social media that often features cute animals saving lives or going on a personal journey.
The strange videos, pejoratively called AI slop, appear to mainly be coming from China and were dubbed “pet dramas” by the South China Morning Post. These videos are racking up a crazy amount of views with one video titled “Lovely baby met a plane crash, poor pug rescued him,” receiving 427 million views at the time of writing.
Last year, an AI video of a polar bear “being rescued” went extremely viral over one weekend and many people thought it was real.