Discovering AI-Generated Videos

Meredith's husband 0:26

Recently , we , you and I both or actually I found it , but I sent it to you and we both watched some videos on YouTube which we thought were really great , because they talked about something that is of a lot of interest to us right now , and the videos were basically just or at least I thought they were snippets taken from a speech that a very well-known psychologist was giving . I won't name the person , it doesn't really matter . In watching the video , it seemed to me and one of the skills actually , I won't call it a skill , because a skill implies that it was developed but a weird ability that I seem to have is to recognize voices .

Meredith 1:08

Yeah , you are incredible with voices .

Meredith's husband 1:10

Has provided absolutely no value in my life at all , but I seem to be really good at it .

Meredith 1:16

You're really good at it .

Meredith's husband 1:18

And so in watching this video , I could tell that this person I know this person . I don't follow them , but I know them well enough to know their voice .

Meredith 1:26

Yeah , I should say I don't know them at all Right , but I have listened to them enough to know their voice . You are familiar with their voice . Yes , I know their voice .

Meredith's husband 1:33

This was their voice , as far as I could tell , but it sounded like it was speeded up somehow . It sounded like the pauses had been removed , so he was just straight talking for like 30 minutes . And it's best to note that the video was a still image with some , you know , like a little bit of stuff going on over it yeah , which is which you're right is kind of a red flag but , also not totally uncommon .

Meredith 1:59

Not necessarily .

Meredith's husband 2:01

Yeah , but anyway . So I did a little bit of research because I wanted to see where that was coming from , because I thought it had . I thought maybe what was happening was either it was sped up just to make it seem more exciting , which people do Sometimes . I know this as a podcaster . This is not sped up .

Meredith 2:18

Oh no , Although there is One listener who does listen to it at 1.25 .

Meredith's husband 2:23

Yeah , I have been . No , it's 1.21 . I've been told that I can be listened to at speed 1.21 exactly , and it doesn't sound like I have been sped up . But , our episodes are like 10 minutes long . I know Really .

Meredith 2:37

Yes , yes , yes , people need to do whatever they need to do .

Meredith's husband 2:41

Anyway , I thought that this had been sped up . I did a little bit of research on it because I thought it was taken from an actual speech that this person gave , and so it turns out no , completely fake , completely false . This person has never , ever , talked about the subject that we listened to , which was surprising , because it was really good , yeah , and it really sounded like the arguments that he would use to me . Like I said , I've listened to him before and it was like , yeah , that's totally what he would say or what I would expect .

Meredith 3:16

He would say but no , do you know what's interesting Is ? I Googled this person and the subject they were talking about . Yes , so did I , and I couldn't find anything .

Meredith's husband 3:25

Right , right , you've nailed the point today .

Meredith 3:28

I did yet again .

Meredith's husband 3:30

So for Google , there is an incentive to not put fake results in their results . For social , there is no incentive for that . In fact , it's almost the opposite

Telltale Signs of Fake Content

Meredith's husband 3:41

they're just creating more views and people are spending more time . It's almost the opposite they're just creating more views and people are spending more time . And I read a really interesting article about this a few years ago . How you know social media platforms like Instagram , facebook , youtube , all these things they have rules that say you know , you're not supposed to put up , you're not supposed to create fake accounts .

Meredith 3:59

Right .

Meredith's husband 4:00

Tons and tons of people do , and this I think it cited some people who used to work at one of those platforms and they have absolutely zero incentive to crack down on that . It's just a rule they put up for , like to make you know , to say like hey , to make people peep . To make people peep To make people peel safe . Yes , exactly .

Meredith 4:22

And that they're not wasting their time on false information .

Meredith's husband 4:26

Right , yeah , so social media , including YouTube , which is owned by Google , but it's still social media there isn't really no incentive . There is incentive for Google , like I said In fact , that's how I did my research is , I went to Google , same with you . We went to Google and we found out all that stuff was fake . I found tons of other of those similar videos Really Tons of them . Several different channels all doing the was fake . I found tons of other of those similar videos really tons of them , several different channels all doing the same thing .

Meredith 4:48

And the thing that tripped me was I thought it sounded a little it just there was something that was off . But at one point the speaker said what's important is to live Like you you know , and he mispronounced live . And then , yeah , it was live . Yeah , and I thought and similarly there he .

Meredith's husband 5:10

In some point during the video he referenced carl jung yes and he said john , I'm like well , as a , as a psychologist , he's gonna know how to pronounce young . Yeah , um , and that was that's . That's kind of why I then went and did the research . In doing that research , I went a little deeper after finding out that this was false and like how easy is it to create stuff like that ? Well , it turns out it's very easy . It is extremely easy . So there are websites that you just go to and you can pick a celebrity , a huge list of celebrities , and they'll say anything that you want . And even for free you can do like a one minute or something , get out . But if you sign up , okay , and there were a lot of them .

Meredith 5:54

Because Mel Robbins also has one where you see her voice and I swear it's AI . Yeah , I mean you hear her voice and you just see a static picture .

Meredith's husband 6:06

Yes , and I thought I would be able to tell with my weird voice ability . I used to be able to , but with these ones that I did just as a test on these websites , I couldn't tell Wow , I couldn't tell they're really good , they're really easy , they're really cheap , and so my expectation is that content like this is going to just explode .

Meredith's husband 6:30

I mean , it is already the fact that there's any of it , but like this , the channel that I looked up , as I said , they had probably at least 50 different videos across three , four different channels , getting I don't know how many views , but probably millions .

Meredith 6:47

And they monetize that .

Meredith's husband 6:48

Yes , and so they monetize it and there's no . So I'll talk a little bit about , I guess , what some other giveaways might be . When you see a channel like that , if there are no links to a website , there are no links at all in the show notes , or there are no show notes , or it just links back to the YouTube channel and that's it , that is also kind of , I think , a red flag .

Meredith 7:10

It's self-contained .

Meredith's husband 7:12

And I'll tell you why , and this is also why this is going to be important and what people can take away from this and what you can do to your own website .

Meredith's husband 7:21

So something that is really important to Google and it really always has been , but even more so now in this age of AI-generated content is what they call EAT , eat , e-a-t . It's an acronym , it stands for well , actually now it's E-E-A-T . It used to be E-A-T and it stood for expertise

Google's EAT Framework Explained

Meredith's husband 7:42

, authoritativeness and trustworthiness . Oh , wow . And recently in , I think within the last two years-ish .

Meredith 7:49

Electronic .

Meredith's husband 7:51

No Experience , because experience , I guess , is a little bit different than expertise . I kind of don't know why they did that , because if you have expertise , it seems like you certainly are going to have experience .

Meredith 8:02

You certainly are going to have some experience .

Meredith's husband 8:04

I certainly have experience . You certainly are going to have some experience . I certainly have experience I certainly hope .

Meredith's husband 8:08

So that is , and there's a little bit of controversy around this , because people are always talking about what are the ranking factors for Google ? What does Google look at to determine its ranking ? And eat is a very important one , but it's not a specific thing that you can do . It's not like improving your title tags . It's more of a conceptual thing . It's more of , I would call it , the goal of Google . So it's important , but how you do it ? There is some controversy , like what exactly does it mean ? And what Google has said about it is that the best way that you can think about it is if you are a user , a visitor to a website , what would make you trust that website ? What would make you think that the person or the company speaking has expertise , authoritativeness and trustworthiness ? Authoritativeness and trustworthiness whatever you come up with , whatever would improve your trust in that company , that website . That's what it is .

Meredith's husband 9:12

So that's been the answer . So it's kind of a vague kind of circular , kind of argument .

Meredith's husband 9:16

It's kind of a half rule that has many loopholes , but it is very important , especially with the rise of AI content , and the reason that they , I think , started talking about this in the first place was when evaluating and trying to rank websites that had to do with health , financial advice , like things that could really really impact a person's life . Like if a website is going to give you false information about health or your finances which there are websites that do this but Google essentially they don't want to promote those websites , obviously , so this EAT it was EAT then was really important for those types of sites . Eat for my money is going to become increasingly important nowadays also yeah , but how are they going to differentiate ?

Meredith's husband 10:03

So the question that most people have about this is what does that mean ? What can you do ? Now , it differs for like my clients versus a small business owner like yourself . Yeah , Okay . So for clients it could be things like links to external articles that people have published , or university alumni or awards , accreditations . There are things for a small business owner . Typically you're not going to have those same options , but along those lines you can think about something as simple as testimonials . Testimonials are certainly

Building Trust on Your Website

Meredith's husband 10:41

a sign of trustworthiness and experience .

Meredith's husband 10:47

Now you can fake testimonials , but take the same approach . Could you link to your Google review page ? You can't fake that , something like that . So , like I said , you kind of have to use your creativity in how you are going to show this . Something else , a very detailed or not very detailed , but your about page is an opportunity . Do you have articles you have published somewhere else ? Do you have anything like that Along the same lines , an author page ? So you have a blog .

Meredith's husband 11:19

Whenever you write a blog , on any platform , it's going to keep track of the authors of individual blog articles , right , and usually it will link to the author of a blog . It will be separate from your about page , like this happens on WordPress Squarespace . I would have also an author page and in the author page , you know , can you list it ? Can you list where you went to school or where you learned photography , or do you have any awards or anything ? So it's good to have an author page . I think , in addition to your about page , you can get links , like a link from a . I will link to your site from this podcast . A link from a podcast is very valuable Really . Yes , because think about it , of course , in order to have a link from a podcast . You got to have a podcast , so you got to be somewhat serious about whatever you're doing . Yeah , if you're in , that reminds me there are . I didn't know this , but there are tons and tons and tons and tons of podcasts with only one episode .

Meredith's husband 12:20

Oh , yeah , and and probably some of those at least , was you wanted to get a link from a podcast , because when you do a podcast you have a link on Spotify , on Apple , on all these different podcast platforms .

Meredith 12:31

I thought you were going to say a lot of podcasts are AI .

Meredith's husband 12:37

Oh , not yet .

Meredith 12:38

They will be . How much do you want to bet ?

Meredith's husband 12:42

So a link from a podcast would be great . Links to and from places where you volunteer those would be hard to fake . Link from your Google business profile to your social media sites that's another giveaway is fake content like that . They're not going to link to probably a whole bunch of social media sites . That just means because their whole goal is to just set up something and monetize it on YouTube . They don't want to also have to create a realistic looking profile on other sites .

Meredith 13:15

So I'm also wondering whose speech was that AI saying ?

Meredith's husband 13:20

Well , it was probably based on stuff that that person had actually said . That's actually relatively easy to do Really .

Meredith 13:30

Yes , they didn't just plug in somebody's other , someone else's speech and have it said in their voice .

Meredith's husband 13:38

I don't think so , because then , well , we could test that we could take some of the speech and then paste that into Google and figure it out . I don't think that was the case , though , because I'm just interested in it .

Meredith's husband 13:50

Because some . I'll tell you why . Because because I checked , because I thought the same thing there are , there are several different videos that are identical in what they are saying , but the words are all different . So I think it was . It is based on something , and I will tell you . There are AI tools where you can just feed in a bunch of anyone's podcast , including this one , and say , okay , build a model around the contents of everything this person has said .

The Future of AI Content

Meredith 14:17

And have it be voiced by Keanu .

Meredith's husband 14:20

Yeah , no-transcript , but the tools that are doing this so far are either in beta and only released to like really big influencers , podcasters , or they're pretty expensive , so they're not or they're not , or or they're not expensive and they're also not very good . So , yeah , anyway . So I thought that , like this EAT concept is probably worth a fuller , like a full episode of things you might want to do to help prepare you for the onslaught of AI content , but I'm curious what people would think , so I'm going to put a link below to an Instagram post . It's not fake , it's generated by me , and if you do want to hear a fuller episode about how to improve your EAT , then just like that post . So I know at least if nobody likes it .

Meredith 15:41

I'm not going to do it . No , I'm not going to waste our time .

Meredith's husband 15:44

I hope that helps . Does that help yeah ?