29/12/2025

LYFE MONDAY | DEC 29, 2025

24

AI resurrections of dead celebrities amuse, rankle

IN a parallel reality, Queen Elizabeth II gushes over cheese puffs, a gun-toting Saddam Hussein struts into a wrestling ring, and Pope John Paul II attempts skateboarding. Hyper-realistic AI videos of dead celebrities – created with apps such as OpenAI’s easy-to-use Sora – have rapidly spread online, prompting debate over the control of deceased people’s likenesses. OpenAI’s app, launched in September and widely dubbed as a deepfake machine, has unleashed a flood of videos of historical figures including Winston Churchill as well as celebrities such as Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. In one TikTok clip, Queen Elizabeth II, clad in pearls and a crown, arrives at a wrestling match on a scooter, climbs a fence and leaps onto a male wrestler. In a separate Facebook clip, the late queen is shown praising “delightfully orange” cheese puffs in a supermarket aisle, while another depicts her playing football. But not all videos – powered by OpenAI’s Sora 2 model – have prompted laughs. In October, OpenAI blocked users from creating videos of Martin Luther King Jr after the estate of the civil rights icon complained about disrespectful depictions. Some users created videos depicting King making monkey noises during his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech, illustrating how users can portray public figures at will, making them say or do things they never did. ‘Maddening’ “We’re getting into the ‘uncanny valley’,” said Constance de Saint Laurent, a professor at Ireland’s Maynooth University, referring to the phenomenon in which interactions with artificial objects are so human-like it triggers unease. “If suddenly you started receiving videos of a deceased family member, this is traumatising. These (videos) have real consequences,” she said. In recent weeks, the children of late actor Robin Williams, comedian George Carlin and activist Malcolm X have condemned the use of Sora to create synthetic videos of their fathers.

Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin Williams, recently pleaded on Instagram to “stop sending me AI videos of dad”, calling the content “maddening”. An OpenAI spokesman said while there were “strong free speech interests in depicting historical figures”, public figures and their families should have ultimate control over their likeness. For “recently deceased” figures, he added, authorised representatives or estate owners can now request that their likeness Hany Farid, co-founder of GetReal Security and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said: “Despite what OpenAI says about wanting people to control their likeness, they have released a tool that decidedly does the opposite. “While they (mostly) stopped the creation of MLK Jr videos, they are not stopping users from co-opting the identity of many other celebrities. “Even with OpenAI putting some safeguards to protect MLK Jr, there will be another AI model that does not, and so this problem will surely only get worse.” That reality was underscored in the aftermath of Hollywood director Rob Reiner’s alleged murder this month, as AFP fact-checkers uncovered AI-generated clips using his likeness spreading online. As advanced AI tools proliferate, the vulnerability is no longer confined to public figures – deceased non-celebrities may also have their names, likenesses and words repurposed for synthetic manipulation. Researchers warn that the unchecked spread of synthetic content – widely called AI slop – could ultimately drive users away from social media. “The issue with misinformation in general is not so much that people believe it. A lot of people don’t. “The issue is that they see real news and they don’t trust it anymore. And this (Sora) is going to massively increase that,” said Saint Laurent. – AFP not be used in Sora. ‘Control likeness’

How TikTok decides what to show each user T HE content recommendation algorithm that powers the online short video platform TikTok has executives have said that its algorithm is based on “interest signals”. The short-video format enables TikTok’s algorithm to become much more dynamic and even capable of tracking changes in users’ The short-video format enables TikTok’s algorithm to become much more dynamic. – 123RFPIC o Insight into algorithm powering platform development experience. What does research reveal about algorithm? TikTok also regularly recommends content that falls outside of users’ interests, which the company’s management has repeatedly said is essential to TikTok’s user experience.

once again come under the spotlight after the app’s Chinese owner ByteDance signed binding agreements to form a joint venture that will hand control of operations of TikTok’s US app to American and global investors, including cloud computing company Oracle. What makes algorithm powerful? Analysts have said that it is not just the algorithms, but also how they work with the short-video format, that have made TikTok so successful globally. But TikTok showed that an algorithm, driven by the understanding of a user’s interest, could be more powerful. Rather than building its algorithm on “social graph” like Meta has, TikTok

A study, which researchers from the US and Germany published last year, found TikTok’s algorithm “exploits user interests in 30% to 50% of the recommendation videos”, after examining data from 347 TikTok users and five automated bots. “This finding indicates that the TikTok algorithm opts to recommend a large number of explore videos in an attempt to either infer better the user interests or maximise user retention by recommending many videos that are outside of the user’s (known) interests,” the researchers wrote in the paper titled TikTok and the Art of Personalisation . – Reuters

preferences and interests across time, going as granular as what a user may like during a certain period of time during the day. And the positioning of TikTok as an app built for mobile devices from the beginning also gave it an advantage over rival platforms that had to adapt their interfaces from computer screens. TikTok’s early entry into the short-video market also gave the company a big early-mover advantage. Meta’s Instagram did not launch Reels until 2020 while Alphabet’s YouTube launched Shorts in 2021, both of which lag TikTok in years of data and product

The Sora 2 website displayed in front of AI-generated videos on a screen. – AFPPIC