Is there truth in advertising? Do we care if the stories are real and portrayed by an actor?

Today’s AI video generation tools are about to unleash a host of lies on your social and media channels. Who cares, right? Advertising has always been full of bs and lies.

I wrote about one of them Creatify.ai recently, and was pretty amazed at what was possible. Now, these tools are not cheap, and that’s why they are giving away samples. This current tool works very similarly but has a more professional and business persona for its platform. Here is the video that HeyGen created.

While her hand gestures are a bit off, she does make my pitch. What is going to happen, is companies that can afford this kind of ai tomfoolery are going to blast ads all over social media that appear to be testimonials for live people. They are not. My previous post on this topic showed two ai-generated marketing videos for my life coaching business. They were a bit more creepy because they were not real people and the stories they told about how my work has impacted their life, a complete fabrication.

What is advertising? Do we believe anything we’re told on TV or social media? Sure, we might buy the nutritional supplements, but do we believe or hope they will actually make us feel better?

Does it matter? Is the fakeness of this spokesperson any different than a paid actor? Of course, this virtual woman was paid much less. No video shoot, no retakes. Just type in the words and she says them, with emphatic hand gestures to boot. I’m not sure this is the direction I’m interested in exploring, but I see the shitstorm of content on the horizon.