{"id":343257,"date":"2025-12-12T00:04:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T00:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/343257\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T00:04:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T00:04:12","slug":"artificial-intelligence-just-killed-the-wildlife-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/343257\/","title":{"rendered":"Artificial Intelligence Just Killed the Wildlife Video"},"content":{"rendered":"

Updated December 11, 2025 09:39AM<\/p>\n

A black bear lumbers through a suburban front yard that\u2019s been decorated for Halloween. One of the decorations\u2014an animatronic ghost\u2014begins to shake and moan and light up, its sensor triggered by the approaching animal. Terrified, the bear turns and sprints away, only to slam head-first into the homeowner\u2019s pickup truck.<\/p>\n

My ring camera caught this insane video in my yard!! reads a caption over the video.<\/p>\n

This clip caught my attention when it popped into my Instagram feed a few months ago. I am a huge fan of wildlife videos\u2014specifically, footage of whimsical animal activity<\/a> captured by wildlife cameras, dashcams, or people\u2019s home surveillance equipment. As I have done far too many times, I mindlessly clicked the \u201clike\u201d button and then shared the bear video with some friends, before returning to my braindead scrolling.<\/p>\n

Unbeknownst to me, this video was a fake, just another AI-generated clip circulating the Internet. Since I validated it with my click, Instagram\u2019s algorithm immediately chummed my feed with an impressive tonnage of wacky AI wildlife videos. In quick succession I watched a porch-pirate raccoon attack a decorative clown; a barn owl peck a rock climber on the side of El Capitan; a marauding squirrel chase a grizzly bear down a bike trail.<\/p>\n

I hoovered up this content, watching hundreds of videos. Yes, I knew that they were fake. But they appealed to my brain in the same way that real ones do\u2014my neurons tingled as I endlessly scrolled. Within a matter of hours I\u2019d developed an addiction to AI wildlife videos.<\/p>\n

This affliction was short-lived, and after a few days, I came to an unfortunate realization: I could no longer discern an authentic wacky animal video from one created by generative AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you start to think some of it can be fake, you start to think all of it can be fake,\u201d Ben Colman, an AI expert, told me. \u201cAnd pretty much everything you see or hear on the Internet can be deepfaked now.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was confused and troubled by my brain\u2019s reaction to this diet of AI trash. So I reached out to some experts to try to\u00a0understand what had changed inside of my cranium, and whether or not I\u2019d ever be able to tell a fake animal video from the real thing.<\/p>\n

AI Video Goes from Goofy to Great<\/p>\n

We all remember the garish AI videos that first popped into our social media feeds way back in 2023. The imperfections were impossible to ignore: people with gross fingers or extra teeth, objects that magically appeared or vanished, stuff mysteriously melting or bursting into flames. Check out this AI cooking video<\/a> to relive the charm.<\/p>\n

Those days are long gone. Powerful new video AI models released in recent months<\/a>\u2014OpenAI\u2019s Sora 2, Google\u2019s Veo 3, LTX Studio, and others\u2014have erased the quality gap.<\/p>\n

\u201cA year ago I could have told you all the things you can look for to discern an AI video,\u201d Colman told me. \u201cBut now it\u2019s gotten so good that even the PhDs on our team can\u2019t tell the differences themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"A still image from the wildlife film \u2018The Last Trapper\u2019 show two grizzly bears locked in combat (Photo: Eric TRAVERS\/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

I reached out to Coleman in late December to ask him about the rise in AI wildlife videos. Coleman is the CEO and co-founder of a cybersecurity company called Reality Defender<\/a>, which identifies harmful AI video and attempts to flag it or get social platforms to take it down. Major corporations and even government entities hire Reality Defender to identify\u00a0fraud\u2014content that could cost a company millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

But even firms like Reality Defender are coming up against the same hurdle I encountered during my scrolling: the AI video is too good.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout the help of a tool now, it\u2019s almost impossible for the average internet user to understand whether an image or a video or a piece of audio is AI-generated or not,\u201d Francesco Cavalli, cofounder of another AI security company, Sensity AI, recently told<\/a> Fast Company.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While governments and corporations are willing to pay for companies to sift out the really damaging stuff, there\u2019s not the same incentive to police whimsical videos of bears and raccoons and squirrels.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another reason why the tonnage of AI wildlife videos has increased so quickly. The grainy video quality of home surveillance equipment and wildlife cameras is relatively easy for AI to reproduce.<\/p>\n

\u201cA few years ago it took us $15,000 to make a fake video of you or me. Now, it\u2019s basically free,\u201d Colman added.<\/p>\n

\"\"A motion-activated wildlife camera (Photo: Silas Stein\/picture alliance via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

This phenomenon gained mainstream attention in August when the Patient Zero of goofy animal clips gained national attention. An eight-second backyard surveillance video appeared showing a group of bunny rabbits gleefully bouncing on a trampoline<\/a>. You better believe I watched that clip.<\/p>\n

The video was eventually debunked as a fake, but not until it racked up more than 240 million views on TikTok.\u00a0The clip was so popular that it inspired its own line of copycat footage. You can now watch squirrels, raccoons, deer, bears, and even an elephant bob up and down on the same trampoline.<\/p>\n

Why Create AI Animal Videos?<\/p>\n

So, why spend so much time and effort creating AI videos of raccoons eating candy or squirrels attacking bears? When I posed this question to Coleman, he laughed. \u201cI can\u2019t speak why creators do what they do,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019d have to ask one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I did. After a lengthy process of sending out messages on various social media platforms, I got in touch with a man who identified himself as Omar. Omar is the braintrust behind an Instagram handle called @Wildencountermoments<\/a>, which is what you\u2019d get if you tossed all of David Attenborough\u2019s wildlife films and a bunch of jump-scare horror movies into a blender.<\/p>\n

Omar told me that he does wildlife videos as his full-time profession from his home in Egypt. \u201cI treat this project as a digital media startup,\u201d he said. \u201cIt has evolved from a passion project into a professional career.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was surprisingly candid with his process for creating his videos. He told me he studies stories of animal encounters to develop concepts for his videos. He then watches real-life videos of animals from dashcams or wilderness cameras\u2014yep, the videos I adore\u2014to understand an animal\u2019s behavior.<\/p>\n

Omar feeds a description of the idea into a generative AI model to get a raw clip. He then uses professional post-production software to fine-tune the color, sound, and motion.<\/p>\n

\u201cA single 15-second clip can take several hours of work,\u201d he told me. \u201cGenerating the perfect movement takes many iterations of trial and error. Then, sound design takes up a significant portion of the time\u2014adding hyper-realistic breathing, footsteps, and nature ambiance\u00a0is crucial because silent video never feels real.\u201d<\/p>\n

But why?<\/p>\n

\"\"The magic of wildlife photography and videography is catching a rare moment in time (Photo: Jay Biggerstaff \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Omar told me he\u2019s long been fascinated by the \u201craw\u201d moments of nature that traditional documentaries often leave out. High-tension and terrifying moments, like shark attacks or close encounters with hungry carnivores. \u201cI want to recreate that adrenaline rush\u2014the feeling of being defenseless in the wild\u2014safely, using technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

He calls his creations \u201chyper-real digital cinema,\u201d and likened his videos to found-footage Hollywood movies like\u00a0Cloverfield\u00a0or\u00a0The Blair Witch Project.\u00a0He believes that his audience knows that the clips are fake, but they suspend their disbelief for entertainment\u2019s sake. His Instagram bio clearly states that his footage is AI-generated. \u201cMy goal isn\u2019t to deceive, but to immerse,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are blurring the line between reality and digital art to create an experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked Omar if he thought of himself as an artist, and his videos as expressions.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as a filmmaker uses CGI to bring a dinosaur to life for a movie, I use generative AI to bring \u2018What if\u2019 survival scenarios to life for social media,\u201d he said. \u201cThe medium is different, but the goal is the same: Storytelling. It is an artistic expression of fear, nature, and the unknown, designed to evoke a real emotional response from the viewer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Making Sense of the AI<\/p>\n

Who am I to argue with Omar\u2019s thoughts on art? While his comments answered my questions about why so much AI animal footage is now online, they did little to help understand how to parse the fake from the real thing.<\/p>\n

Colman had some advice: Look for videos that are sponsored or released in collaboration with an official entity, like a national park. If a clip looks too bizarre and outlandish to be true, it probably is.<\/p>\n

And when in doubt, watch video feeds that are live.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the live space, it\u2019s still pretty expensive to do real-time live deepfakes,\u201d he said. \u201cAt least for now, you can get a little more confidence in live video.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following Colman\u2019s advice, I clicked on a YouTube channel<\/a> of a live feed from a wildlife camera setup somewhere in Denmark. For ten long minutes I stared at live video of a brook running next to a tree. Not a single animal ventured into the camera frame. Not even a bug.<\/p>\n

I fought the urge to pick up my phone and begin scrolling Instagram. And as I wrestled with that reflex that so many of us now combat, I had my second epiphany about goofy, amazing, or hilarious animal videos\u2014the legitimate kind\u2014and why I still love them.<\/p>\n

\"\"A sense of reality is lost when computer-generated images look too lifelike (Photo: aliaboutine\/Instagram)<\/p>\n

These clips of bears snapping selfies, or otters stealing surfboards, represent a magical moment in time when a variety of factors came together in serendipitous coordination. An animal did something bizarre or cute or terrifying, and a camera was there to capture it.<\/p>\n

The reality is that most amazing animal activity goes on unnoticed and undocumented, and the lion\u2019s share of wildlife camera footage is mind-numbingly boring.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a lesson I plan to remember as generative AI continues its rapid evolution. I have no doubt that the other types of outdoor videos I crave\u2014from skiers descending massive slopes to cyclists soaring off jumps\u2014will soon have their AI-generated counterparts.<\/p>\n

But like our friend the bear who got scared by a backyard ghost, not everything we see was made for us to believe.<\/p>\n