Wake up, babe, new viral AI video generator dropped. This time, it’s not OpenAI’s Sora model in the spotlight, it’s Google’s Veo 3, which was announced on Tuesday during the company’s annual I/O keynote. Naturally, people are eager to see what chaos Veo 3 can wreak, and the results have been, well, chaotic. We’ve got disjointed Michael Bay fodder, talking muffins, self-aware AI sims, puppy-centric pharmaceutical ads—the list goes on.
One thing that I keep seeing over and over, however, is—to put it bluntly—AI slop, and a very specific variety. For whatever reason, all of you seem to be absolutely hellbent on getting Veo to conjure up a torrent of smooth-brain YouTube content. The worst part is that this thing is actually kind of good at cranking it out, too. Don’t believe me? Here are the receipts.
You can barely tell this iPhone unboxing isn’t real pic.twitter.com/vfZ2lUoliZ
— Matt Shumer (@mattshumer_) May 21, 2025
Is this 100% convincing? No. No, it is not. At a glance, though, most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if they’re just scrolling through their social feed mindlessly as one does when they’re using literally any social media site/app. Unboxing not cutting it for you? Well, don’t worry, we’ve got some man-on-the-street slop for your viewing pleasure. Sorry, hawk-tuah girl, it’s the singularity’s turn to capitalize on viral fame.
2. Stand-up comedy telling a funny joke that never happenedhttps://t.co/05M6cDZlzK
— Min Choi (@minchoi) May 22, 2025
Again, Veo’s generation is not perfect by any means, but it’s not exactly unconvincing, either. And there’s more bad news: Your Twitch-like smooth-brain content isn’t safe either. Here’s one of a picture-in-picture-style “Fortnite” stream that simulates gameplay and everything. I say “Fortnite” in scare quotes because this is just an AI representation of what Fortnite looks like, not the real thing. Either way, the only thing worse than mindless game streams is arguably mindless game streams that never even happened. And to be honest, the idea of simulating a simulation makes my brain feel achey, so for that reason alone, I’m going to hard pass.
Uhhh… I don’t think Veo 3 is supposed to be generating Fortnite gameplay pic.twitter.com/bWKruQ5Nox
— Matt Shumer (@mattshumer_) May 21, 2025
Listen, I’m not trying to be an alarmist here. In the grand scheme of things, AI-generated YouTube, Twitch, or TikTok chum isn’t going to hurt anyone, exactly, but it also doesn’t paint a rosy portrait of our AI-generated future. If there’s one thing we don’t need more of, it’s filler. Social media, without AI entering the equation, is already mostly junk, and it does make one wonder what the results of widespread generative video will really be in the end. Maybe I’ll wind up with AI-generated egg on my face, and video generators like Flow, Google’s “AI filmmaker,” will be a watershed product for real creators, but I have my doubts.
At the very least, I’d like to see some safeguards if video generation is going to go mainstream. As harmless as AI slop might be, the ability to generate fairly convincing video isn’t one that should be taken lightly. There’s obviously huge potential for misinformation and propaganda, and if all it takes to help mitigate that is watermarking videos created in Veo 3, then it feels like an easy first step. For now, we’ll just have to take the explosion of Veo 3-enabled content with a spoonful of molasses, because there’s a lot of slop to get to, and this might be just the first course.