Doomsday ‘Set Leak’ Videos Are Our New, Inescapable AI Reality

A video was quickly spread around social media over the past 24 hours, racking up 7 million views at the time of this writing, as everyone scrambled to see what were purported to be set leaks from the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, currently shooting in a number of regions.

The video was full of surprises, Robert Downey Jr. in his Doctor Doom costume. The unannounced appearances of Spider-Man, Scarlet Witch and Deadpool. Big reveals!

It’s fake. Of course it’s fake. It’s AI. But it’s AI which shows how much the tech is spiraling into something almost unstoppable.

It’s true, if you pause the video you can no doubt parse that it’s AI. Some parts are more clear than others, like a Thor that looks like Heath Ledger or a Scarlet Witch that looks like Taylor Swift, but if you just flipped through this quickly, you can see how it can “pass” on first glance, at least recreating the look and feel of set leak videos in a way I’ve simply never seen faked before. It was eventually community-noted as AI, but not before it had at least 5 million views or so. Throw this on Facebook (which I’m sure has happened already), and I bet you’d convinced 95% of users there it was legitimate.

It’s funny, the first way I saw this debunked wasn’t because of glitched hands or odd faces, but rather no one believed that Marvel would actually use a practical suit for Iron Man at this point, as that armor has long been CGI with Robert Downey Jr. walking around in a mo-cap suit.

This video quote tweets a set shot that appears to have spawned the entire idea, bringing the still to life in at least one scene and I…I’m not even sure whether that one is an AI image or not (it says it isn’t, which is clearly trustworthy!). It is. I think it is. I need to do some more zooming in.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? In only a few years, we keep getting to new levels of this tech that you have to pause and zoom and scrutinize to prove whether or not it’s AI. This video here would not have been remotely possible a year ago. What happens in a year from now? No more Taylor Swift or Heath Ledger faces, I imagine.

I don’t think this was actually trying to be a serious leak. I mean, throwing Deadpool, Spider-Man and Scarlet Witch in there is kind of a goof. But this was made in a day after the other leaked (“leaked”) set shot was being passed around.

Is this kind of silly? It is, once you break it down and see the obvious changes. But expect to see this kind of thing happen more and more in the leak space and become more and more convincing as a result. The next few years are going to be unsettling.

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