The title of a Forum News wire story, printed in the St. Paul Pioneer Press (gift link), gives the gist of the problem: "AI-generated video invents University of Minnesota cover crop study, racks up 36,000 views." Subhead: "None of it happened. The study does not exist."
Back in May, Liz Stahl, Extension educator at the University of Minnesota, got an email from someone at a soil and water conservation district, wondering if some research was for real. The email contained a link to a YouTube video. We live in such a surreal time that Stahl wondered at first if that person was a scammer, and whether she should click on the link.
After determining that the sender was a real person from an actual conservation district, Stahl checked the video and found that its content was entirely made up — claiming to be based on research at a scale that would not be possible to carry out, by a U of M faculty member who has never heard of the project.
Why make such a video? Because it drives views and clicks to ads, and therefore brings revenue to its creators.
Stahl and others have asked to have the video taken down. They have placed comments below it stating that it is completely fake and AI-generated. Yet it's still up there, and the number of views more than tripled since it was discovered and they began requesting its removal.
Stahl wrote about it on an Extension blog on May 27 (without providing a link to the video or naming the channel).
Some AI tells to watch for in science videos:
- The narration is too smooth, with no vocal hesitations
- Sensationalized claims (scientists tend to leave those to journalists)
- Use of stock photos
- Citations that lead nowhere
Researchers put their results in many places facilitated by their universities. One of the major reasons for the existence of Extension, after all, is to get information about agricultural research out to farmers. YouTube videos of this kind of research in general are reinventing the wheel, and fake videos are taking the wheels right off.
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