AXIS

I hate you sora ai

Have you all been noticing the rise of Sora AI popping up on our feeds lately? Showing us celebrities engaging in activities that aren’t usually part of their routines, like Jake Paul giving us an ‘extensive’ makeup tutorial or 2pac going food shopping, which is impossible since the late rapper was shot in 1996… so they say (sorry, I won’t start before I write a piece on conspiracies), or maybe the Roadmen in parliament discussing whether ‘the block needs funds’. Yes, we can all giggle, share, like, and repost. But does anyone find it grating and irritating? Alarming and frightening? Isn’t there a hint of unease, sickness, or an overwhelming eeriness lurking beneath this odd feeling of unsettledness?

When AI-driven content first began its surge in 2019–2020, it sent shock waves through the world. Yet, within that excitement, there was always this theme of disquiet, an underlying tension that felt strangely unsettling. That feeling always reminds me of a specific word that captures it perfectly: uncanny, meaning “strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way.”
There’s an odd link I always draw between that and Disney’s early attempts at a new animation style in the early 2000s. Films like Chicken Little, The Polar Express, and Mars Needs Moms come to mind. Children, being more sensitive to facial cues, tend to react strongly when a facial expression moves oddly or in a way that feels wrong. Hence, the uncanny.
The constant push and pull of ‘I know this isn’t real, but it feels real,’ this constant fight of tangibility. It’s freaking exhausting

So, why am I talking about the uncanny? because it directly relates to what we’re seeing now. In terms of media literacy, there was a common refrain online, ‘media literacy is dead’, and yes, I can partially agree. But what about now? This unsettling emotion of the uncanny may be able to push us out of this trench of deepfake slop.
When I watch an AI-generated video, I have this underlying feel of fear and nausea. It always bewildered me how this deep fake video could physically turn me inside out. The surrealness of the hands and the way their eyes just have this sense of ‘the lights are on but no one is home’, it’s so haunting when you observe it and regurgitate it instead of mindlessly swiping.

So, in essence, could we say that emotional literacy could be a form to actually revive media literacy? Because with all the content we see, it’s obvious that we have become desensitised to some content.

The godfather of ai

There’s this odd phenomenon of how we’ve become okay with, and even started to normalise, the flood of AI-generated “slop” in our everyday lives. What once shocked us has now been quietly absorbed into the background of society.

Take the crochet kittens craze, for example. When those videos first went viral, the comments section was full of confusion:

‘GUYS THIS IS NOT AI’

‘Is it not real? I’m confused?’

Or worse, AI is becoming so good that we now want to genetically manufacture crochet kittens.

‘Oh my god, that crochet curly kitten is so cute, I didn’t know we could breed them’

And perhaps the most ironic part of all this is that Geoffrey Hinton, nicknamed “the Godfather of AI” (a phrase already loaded with semantic ambivalence, as it is both creation and potential destruction), stood at the 2024 Nobel Prize banquet and didn’t so much celebrate AI as warn us about it.

Direct quote from Geoffrey Hinton’s Speech at the Nobel Prize banquet:
‘In the near future, AI may be used to create terrible new viruses and horrendous lethal weapons that decide by themselves who to kill or maim’

If that doesn’t make you sh*t the bed, I don’t know what else will.

Society needs to become more aware of the content we consume. And you might say we hear this all the time. Yes, I am fully aware; however, we all know this type of junk and nonsense will keep being created, but systems must be put in place. Our brains are remarkable organs, and we shouldn’t devalue them by constantly exposing them to such content. So, is media literacy making a comeback? I don’t know, but if we look at Ofcom in the UK, it reports that around 40% of UK adults say they’ve encountered misinformation or deepfake content in the past month. But what about those who don’t recognise it? Meanwhile, 69% believe they can confidently identify when they are being misinformed online. So, perhaps there is hope after all.

are you together, or are you just parasocial baby?

Just a side note before I round this up: creating AI images of you and your favourite celeb in a Polaroid isn’t funny or cute, it’s weird and parasocial, and you need to go outside and touch some grass. No, actually, you need to eat the grass, because touching it isn’t enough. Just because you saw someone do it on your feed doesn’t mean you have to compete and follow. You are not sheep; you are an individual. You were not born to follow suit. If that poked you a little, I’m glad; that means the message pierced you, my love.

So, can I ask you a couple of questions?

Do you know what media literacy is?
Can you identify when you are being misinformed?
Can you critically analyse the information presented to you within the masses of media?
And finally, do you think we are in a forever decline of media literacy?

Or do you just not give a flying f*ck?

The world is your oyster; however, does your oyster have AI or lemon juice?