TikTok’s obsession with AI gastro horror makes me want to give up food

Warning: don’t dip into TikTok before a meal these days. In fact, just don’t look at TikTok at all – at least not if you value your relationship with food.

I use the social media app rarely enough to discover a new viral trend each time I open it, and each one tends to be more horrifying than the the last. At the moment, it’s all about surreal AI-generated videos of people eating or being eaten – or of foods eating or being fed to themselves. The latest AI video generators allow anyone to generate scenes of horror that would make David Cronenberg feel queasy, and yet it’s hard to look away.

Google’s Veo 3 is largely responsible for the viral AI video trend, allowing the generation of short video clips with unprecedented precision and photorealism. Just a couple of years ago, AI video produced visual nightmares of a very different kind.

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Back then, the AI video body horror was the result of generators’ inability to maintain consistent representations of the human body. Now, there are models that can generate videos that look disturbingly realistic, even if they’re showing the impossible. And they’re demonstrating that people love anything that is surreal and unsettling.

Some of these AI videos tap into the popularity of ASMR videos, but take the concept in surreal new directions. Others merely seek to shock.

If a creation needs to produce emotion to count as art, I guess this form of AI does at least check that box. It’s impossible not to feel a visceral reaction to some of the content that’s being generated in the latest trend.

Like good body horror, it’s repulsive, but also slightly addictive. You know you’re going to hate what’s coming, but it’s hard to turn away because you want to know what travesty the warped creator has dreamed up.

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For more on what’s happening in AI, see our piece on indie developers’ reactions to AI pixel art mush and the big claims being made about Loveart AI.