We were promised a creative revolution, an explosion of artistic expression powered by artificial intelligence. Instead, we’re getting some of the most grotesque and bizarre content imaginable, churning out of Silicon Valley’s latest shiny toys. The promise of democratising video creation has, it seems, also democratised the ability to be tasteless, offensive, and downright cruel. This isn’t just a teething problem; it’s a symptom of a much larger rot at the core of our rush to innovate at all costs. We have flung open a digital Pandora’s Box, and the first things to fly out are not hope, but wrestling matches between historical villains.
This is the messy, uncomfortable reality of AI content misuse. For every beautiful, imagined landscape a tool like OpenAI’s Sora can generate, there’s someone in a darkened room using it to create something that targets, demeans, or rewrites history for cheap laughs. It’s a problem that goes far beyond a few tasteless videos; it strikes at the very heart of our trust in what we see and hear. And right now, the industry’s answers feel dangerously inadequate.
The New Face of Falsehood
So, what exactly are we dealing with here? You’ve likely heard the term ‘deepfake’. It sounds like something out of a science fiction B-movie, but the reality is far more mundane and, for that reason, more insidious. At its core, a deepfake is a piece of media, usually a video or audio clip, where a person’s likeness has been replaced with someone else’s using artificial intelligence. Think of it as a form of digital puppetry, only the strings are algorithms and the puppet can be made to say or do anything its controller desires.
Originally, the technology was a niche hobby for visual effects enthusiasts. Now, it has become terrifyingly accessible. The danger isn’t just in creating a funny video of a celebrity in an unlikely situation. The real impact is the erosion of truth. When a world leader can be convincingly faked giving a speech declaring war, or a private citizen can be inserted into a compromising video they had no part in, the very fabric of evidence and reality begins to fray. How can we trust a video from a war zone? How can a jury believe footage presented in court? This is the societal quicksand we are stumbling into, where AI content misuse becomes a weapon for misinformation, blackmail, and political destabilisation.
Case Study: When Sora Gets Sick
Which brings us to OpenAI, the company that has become the poster child for this AI gold rush. Their latest creation, a video generation tool reportedly named Sora 2, was meant to be a showcase of AI’s creative potential. It can take a simple text prompt and spin it into a photorealistic, high-definition video clip. The demonstrations were, admittedly, breathtaking. But what happens when you give a tool this powerful to the internet? You get exactly what you’d expect.
According to a report in the Daily Star, users have been abusing the tool to create a gallery of horrors. We’re talking about videos depicting Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin as tag-team wrestlers, or Jeffrey Epstein in a WWE-style match. Other grim creations reportedly include Steve Irwin wrestling a stingray and Stephen Hawking being tackled. It’s not just offensive; it’s a deeply cynical form of historical and personal vandalism, all for the sake of a few viral clips on TikTok.
The human cost of this thoughtless “creativity” was brought into sharp focus by Zelda Williams, daughter of the late, great Robin Williams. She has been inundated with AI-generated clips puppeteering her father’s voice and likeness. Her plea was heartbreakingly simple: “Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad.” As she rightly pointed out, these creations aren’t a tribute. They are, in her words, “horrible TikTok slop” and a violation of a person’s legacy. She described AI as “badly recycling and regurgitating the past,” a point that cuts through the industry’s hype. It’s not creation; it’s desecration. We are digitally grave-robbing for content, and the families of the deceased are left to deal with the trauma. Is this the future of entertainment we were promised?
The Moderation Quagmire
So, the obvious question is: why can’t the platforms just stop this? This is where the unenviable task of content moderation tech comes in. The idea is simple: develop systems that can automatically identify and remove harmful content, including deepfakes. The practice, however, is a technological and ethical minefield.
It’s an endless cat-and-mouse game. For every advancement in deepfake detection, the AI models used to generate the fakes get better at evading it. They learn what the detectors are looking for and adapt. It’s like trying to build a perfect antivirus program when the viruses are rewriting their own code every second. The sheer volume of content being uploaded daily to platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and X is a tsunami that moderation teams, both human and machine, are struggling to hold back.
Furthermore, there are complex issues of free speech and context.
* Is a deepfake used for political satire the same as one used for malicious defamation?
* Where do you draw the line?
* Who gets to be the global arbiter of what is acceptable parody versus dangerous misinformation?
These are not easy questions, and the tech companies are, frankly, making it up as they go along. Their primary business model is engagement, and shocking content, unfortunately, engages. They are caught between a responsibility to police their platforms and a business incentive that sometimes rewards the very content they claim to be fighting.
A Blueprint for Ethical AI?
This mess forces a much bigger, more fundamental conversation about ethical AI development. For too long, the guiding mantra in Silicon Valley has been “move fast and break things.” Well, things are well and truly broken. Trust is broken. Legacies are being broken. And the potential for societal-level harm is growing exponentially. We can no longer afford to treat ethics as an optional add-on or a problem for the PR department to handle after a scandal.
Ethical AI development must be baked into the process from the very beginning. This means:
– Safety by Design: Building robust safeguards and limitations directly into the AI models. If a tool can’t be prevented from creating harmful content, perhaps it isn’t ready for a public release.
– Radical Transparency: Companies need to be open about their models’ limitations, biases, and the data they were trained on. We can’t have a black box dictating our reality.
– Accountability: Who is responsible when AI is misused? The user who created the content? The platform that hosted it? The company that built the tool? The answer is likely all three, and we need clear legal and regulatory frameworks that establish lines of liability.
OpenAI and its competitors are not just software companies anymore. They are becoming shapers of public perception and, in a way, custodians of reality. That is an immense power, and it demands an equally immense sense of responsibility. Simply releasing a powerful tool into the wild with a vague “terms of service” agreement is no longer a defensible strategy.
The Spectre of a Post-Truth Future
If we continue down this path without a serious course correction, the future looks bleak. Imagine a world where you cannot trust any video or audio message, not even one seemingly from a loved one asking for help. Elections could be swayed by perfectly faked scandals released hours before polls open. Financial markets could be crashed by a fabricated CEO announcement. This isn’t dystopian fantasy; it’s the logical extension of the technology we are currently treating like a toy.
The AI content misuse we are seeing now with Sora is just the practice run. They are testing the water, seeing what they can get away with. The tools will only get better, cheaper, and more widespread. The call to action here is urgent and multi-faceted.
– Developers need to move from a mindset of “can we build it?” to “should we build it?” and “how do we build it safely?”.
– Lawmakers must get ahead of the curve, working with technologists and ethicists to craft sensible, enforceable regulations that protect individuals and the public square without stifling genuine innovation.
– And for us, the public, we need to cultivate a healthy scepticism. We need to become more critical consumers of media and demand more from the companies whose products are reshaping our world.
The genie is not going back into the bottle. The technology for AI-generated content is here to stay. The question that hangs over us now is whether we will control it, or whether we will allow it to control us. The images of historical figures in a wrestling ring are absurd and offensive, but they are also a siren. They are a warning of a future where truth is subjective and reality is up for grabs. Are we listening?
