Fact check: Monstrous sea creatures arent being pulled from the depths [Video]

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Finned creatures with human features hauled aboard a trawler. Huge tentacled molluscs roaming the sea floor. A fisherman with a strange-looking white whale. None of the scenes in these videos are real, but they and similar ones have proliferated on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok where they can get tens of millions of views.

Tools such as Kling and Runway use generative artificial intelligence to make highly realistic videos with a few clicks, adding to the amount of “AI slop” – low-quality or misleading content created using AI – on the internet.

“It’s like spectacle on steroids,” said Clifton van der Linden, director of the Digital Society Lab and an associate professor in political science at McMaster University. “It’s creating something that is beyond the realm of reality but …