Latest news with #photorealistic
News.com.au
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
People online duped for thinking AI influencer Mia Zelu is real as deepfake accounts skyrocket across social media
Influencer Mia Zelu's done it all. Courtside among the biggest names at Wimbledon? Yep. A Coldplay concert experience of a lifetime? Completed it. Sipping coffee in picturesque Italian streets? Piece of cake. Her Instagram page is filled with big bucket list stuff. Except it's not real. Not the typical social media personality, Zelu is actually an AI influencer, meaning she's just a generated picture on a screen. Nothing more. But she looks so real that most of her 167k Instagram followers wouldn't even know she doesn't actually exist. Don't tell those who keep up with her 'sister' Ana Zelu, who's fooled even more people with 267k followers who interact with her either unknowing or uncaring of the truth behind her account. With their photorealistic posts and human-like captions, the fake sisters are just a few of the increasing number of AI accounts that are fooling people into thinking they're real, despite (some of) their bios stating they aren't. Tech expert and editor of Trevor Long says the reason these accounts are having the same effect on people as real influencers is because AI has understood what people are drawn to and can feed into the same patterns without skipping a beat. For a technological tool designed to help people, having it understand what people want isn't a bad thing. The danger is not knowing what's real and what's not. 'Most of us don't know the influencer on the other side of [an] Instagram account that is real, so knowing that someone is real or artificial intelligence actually doesn't change much of the perception of content,' Mr Long told 'However, if that content is sculpted and created in such a way that it is truly targeted and you don't have the morals of a real human being deciding whether or not they will sit in that spot, take that photo, try that thing, go to that event, we start to really push the boundaries of where this influential culture might go.' Getty Images' Asia-Pacific head of creative Kate Roruke said they've conducted research that found that although 65 per cent of people could spot an AI photo, more than 95 per cent also mistook real images for AI. 'People are used to seeing curated, almost perfect images from human influencers, achieved through extensive editing, filters and professional photography. Zelu, being entirely AI-generated, naturally embodies this idealised flawless skin, perfect lighting and picture-perfect poses,' she said. But concerns then about the extreme uses of the tech then also create a problem, like deep fake pornographic material which has pushed the moral and ethical boundaries of AI. Numerous celebrities like Taylor Swift and face of the NRLW Jaime Chapman have already become victims. The value of knowing if something is real has never been more important in an age when a tool not everyone yet understands is already out of control. Mr Long says it is incumbent on the big tech companies like Meta and TikTok to be able to give users validation on what is real and what isn't, and give precedence to the real people using their platforms. 'We talk so much about the algorithm. It should be the case that real people are prioritised so that we know that we can listen to and decide whether or not we trust that person, otherwise we're probably putting our trust in an AI fake individual,' he said. While easier said than done, companies like YouTube have taken steps towards creating better clarity and priority to real content, last week announcing they were demonetising accounts and channels that generate purely AI generated content. 'There's some fun AI videos out there. It might be a kangaroo doing a vlog or silly things like that,' Mr Long said.
The Verge
11-06-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Amazon is about to be flooded with AI-generated video ads
Amazon is making it easier for sellers to quickly create generative AI ads on its platform, sometimes with just a single click. Amazon Ad's Video Generator, a free advertising tool introduced in beta last year, now has some new tricks and is generally available for sellers in the US to create 'photorealistic video assets' in five minutes or less. New capabilities include motion improvements to show items in action, which Amazon says is best for showcasing products like toys, tools, and worn accessories. For example, Video Generator can now create clips that show someone wearing a watch on their wrist and checking the time, instead of simply displaying the watch on a table. The tool generates six different videos to choose from, and allows brands to add their logos to the finished results. The Video Generator can now also make ads with multiple connected scenes that include humans, pets, text overlays, and background music. The editing timeline shown in Amazon's announcement video suggests the ads max out at 21 seconds.. The resulting ads edge closer to the traditional commercials we're used to seeing while watching TV or online content, compared to raw clips generated by video AI tools like OpenAI's Sora or Adobe Firefly. A new video summarization feature can create condensed video ads from existing footage, such as demos, tutorials, and social media content. Amazon says Video Generator will automatically identify and extract key clips to generate new videos formatted for ad campaigns. A one-click image-to-video feature is also available that creates shorter GIF-style clips to show products in action. We'll likely see Amazon retailers utilizing AI-generated video ads in the wild now that the tool is generally available in the US and costs nothing to use — unless the ads are so convincing that we don't notice anything at all.
