A YouTube channel that appears to be automatically generating obituaries for living celebrities is raising eyebrows across social media.
The channel, which first appeared on YouTube in November of last year, has already produced 98 videos that discuss the imagined deaths of high-profile figures.
“What level of cyberpunk dystopia is a youtube channel that seems to autogenerate obituary videos of still living celebrities, narrated by a robot voice?” one Twitter user asked on Wednesday.
Little is known about the channel, which has garnered roughly 2,800 followers since its launch. Comments are disabled on all videos. The channel’s About page features no contact information and claims the creator originates from Azerbaijan.
The channel is deceptively named “10M views,” which can make view counts on videos appear greatly exaggerated at first glance.
Each video is based around a specific celebrity and uses a robotic voice to detail their lives and fabricate their deaths. Celebrities featured include actors Joe Pesci, Martin Sheen, Glenn Close, Kim Novak, Laurence Fishburne, Carol Burnett, and Danny Glover. Celebrities who have actually died, such as actor Lance Reddick, also have dedicated videos.
A majority of the video’s tile images include a photo of a real female news anchor, such as CNN’s Erin Burnett, alongside a photo of the celebrity being discussed. None of the anchors, however, actually appear in any of the videos.
None of the videos viewed by the Daily Dot actually mention how the celebrities purportedly died either. Analysis by the Daily Dot also shows that the channel is monetized, meaning it generates funds through running ads on its videos.
Sam Gregory, a synthetic media expert with the human rights group Witness, told the Daily Dot that while the channel appears clever it is unlikely to be using the latest AI technology.
“I would assume this is a scam to generate views given the other signals like the deceptive channel title and thumbnails,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a ‘hallucinating’ ChatGPT script, though I suppose they could be using basic tools to do automated scripting, voice, and image edits to script, but nothing sophisticated or particular to the current generative AI wave.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Google, which owns YouTube, to inquire about the channel but did not receive a reply.
