Most of the earliest motion pictures feature humans. “The Horse in Motion,” widely regarded as the first-ever stop motion film from 1878, shows a man on horseback in 11 frames. Even the Lumière brothers’ “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat” from 1896 shows passengers waiting to board. Entertainment has always prioritized the human experience. So why are we still wasting our time and resources on garbage generated by artificial intelligence?
In just 11 days, a TikTok account called Ai Cinema has amassed hundreds of millions of views and 3.3 million followers for its AI-generated “Fruit Love Island” series, and that’s just counting the videos that are still up. Most have been taken down, likely because of copyright infringement. If you couldn’t tell by the title, the series completely rips off the popular reality dating show “Love Island,” lazily altering real-life contestants into anthropomorphic produce through a GPT, or generative pre-trained transformer.
The series is as stupid and cease-and-desist-worthy as it sounds, but for some reason, it’s insanely popular. Like the show, audiences vote on which contestants — in this case, which fruit — to send home. While “Fruit Love Island” is more accessible than actual television, it sure as hell can’t replicate what makes reality TV so special: its human subjects.
In episode five, Cherrita tells Orangulo she’s a “mommy,” and Orangulo responds, “Mamacita?” It’d be a hilarious exchange of dialogue if it wasn’t stolen from last year’s season of “Love Island USA.” Watch the two back-to-back, and you’ll see the chief issue with AI-generated content. Cherrita and Orangulo spit out robotic lines incessantly without nuances like tone, delivery and emotion. Because it’s on a short-form platform, “Fruit Love Island” only has a few minutes to hook its viewers, but this frantic pacing only makes the series feel more detached from reality.
Reality TV hinges on unpredictability. How could anyone know Lisa Rinna would throw a wine glass at Kim Richards on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills?” What about #Scandoval, the cheating scandal between “Vanderpump Rules” costars Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix? Plagiarizing a reality series entirely defeats the purpose of unscripted TV, where entertainment value derives from subjects responding to their environment in real time. If you’re already taking the time to watch something, it might as well be engaging.
Ai Cinema’s lackluster characterization and recycled storylines should make you feel guilty for watching “Fruit Love Island.” GPTs can’t compete with hours of footage cut together from actual TV camera operators by editors to create complex story arcs that give audiences a taste of relationship dynamics. Instead, these crappy fruit heads just suddenly kiss or swing on each other when they’re not standing absolutely still and flapping their gums about nothing. The fact that millions of viewers are sat refreshing Ai Cinema’s account is bewildering when it takes absolutely no talent to type a couple of sentences into a GPT and make a shitty animation.
Of course, you can’t expect generative AI to rival the quality of real TV, but that doesn’t stop people from watching it. And even when these TikTok accounts venture into other concepts, they still aren’t making anything deserving of our attention. There’s plenty of soulless rip-off shows following “Fruit Love Island’s” lead, including “The Summer I Turned Fruity,” where Conrad and Jeremiah are a banana and strawberry, respectively. Equally uninspired are original AI series like SadAnimalsCry, where fat cats get bullied into being skinny or die in horrific accidents to the tune of an AI-produced cover of Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” with meows instead of lyrics. While admittedly addictive because of their bright colors, quick cuts and absurd narratives, consuming this brain-rotting content is eating away at the time you could be doing literally anything else.
General public sentiments surrounding AI-generated content trend negative, so why are TikTok users giving series like “Fruit Love Island” a pass? AI data centers consume millions of gallons of water and waste electricity, so the last thing we should be watching is a kiwi-headed aberration in a green dress pretending to be Ariana Madix. Instead, redirect your investment to the actual TV industry, where the number of unscripted series is steadily declining. Have we forgotten about the 2023 Hollywood strikes, where the debate over AI’s place in media was a chief issue? If you enjoy dramatic, high-stakes storylines, there are plenty of unscripted series still airing for you to tune into, including any of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives” installations or Netflix’s “Love Is Blind.” Not only are they more entertaining, but it means you won’t be spending your time supporting plagiarized AI slop.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to doomscroll. But the fascination with AI-generated series is frankly embarrassing, especially when creators like Ai Cinema are mindlessly feeding an algorithm source materials created by hundreds of above and below-the-line workers and passing it off as original content. The owner of Ai Cinema commented on a now-deleted post, “Guys I’m losing motivation. These videos take so long and the image and animation gen is getting so bad! I’m so sorry!” Even to this now-viral creator, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. If you’re that desperate for free entertainment, go to the actual “Love Island” accounts, or even better, watch a long-form show on Tubi.
Contact Dani Biondi at [email protected].