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Tech News

YouTube: No More AI Zombie Children

Grifters on YouTube will have to find new ways to make money off of
the suffering of real murder victims.

By
Thomas Germain
Published5 hours ago
Comments (3)
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A finger hitting play on a keyboard, superimposed over a YouTube
video
Photo: Dilok Klaisataporn / Shutterstock.com (Shutterstock)

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web back in 1989, he
probably didn't imagine that his new system would be the repository
for all of humanity's worst impulses, but here we are. The latest
example from the internet horror show comes from YouTube, where the
company was forced to update its policies to say that no, you're not
allowed to make AI videos of dead kids for your true crime content.

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YouTube described the change in a post on its Help Center. "On
January 16, we'll begin striking content that realistically simulates
deceased minors or victims of deadly or well-documented major violent
events describing their death or violence experienced," the company
wrote.

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The update comes in response to a disturbing genre of videos that
generated millions of views on social media with the simulated voices
of real child murder victims describing their own gruesome deaths, as
reported by the Verge Monday.

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"Grandma locked me in an oven at 230 degrees when I was just 21
months old," an animated baby said in one viral TikTok video, before
identifying itself as Rody Marie Floyd, a real murder victim. "Please
follow me so more people know my true story." Similar videos sparked 
widespread attention on YouTube.

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TikTok already has policies that address this class of internet
obscenity. The platform requires labels on AI-created videos and
prohibits deepfakes of people under 18 or any adult who isn't a
public figure.

The videos aren't just disturbing for viewers, they're painful for
survivors. Denise Fergus, whose son James Bulger was abducted and
killed in 1993, called the AI videos featuring her child "disgusting"
in an interview with the Mirror. "It is bringing a dead child back to
life," Fergus said. "It is beyond sick."

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Time and again we've seen there's nothing so depraved that someone
won't try to monetize it online. You could blame the people making
this creep show content, but it's also a logical consequence of a
system that incentivizes creators to hijack our attention.

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