Google's new AI tool, VEO 3, made big advancements with AI video generation.
For years, AI has been far from making hyper realistic content. VEO 3 shows a much different reality.
"It's amazing in just those almost three years just how quickly AI has developed," Scott Church, a professor in the BYU School of Communications, said.
He also weighed in on AI's development.
"The new ones seem to be much better at fidelity and what I mean by that is like faithfulness to reproducing what video looks like," Church said.
Analyzing a VEO 3 AI video, one can still detect the uncanny valley, but at a glance it is really hard to tell it is fake.
VEO 3 is not the only video AI tool. Generation tools like Sora and Runway are text to video AI tools that work very similar to VEO 3.
The biggest difference that makes VEO 3 stand out is the realistic audio it can generate along with the video.
Most of the features offered by these AI tools require a monthly subscription to their service. VEO 3's premium subscription is a whopping $250 a month.
How does the advancement of these video AI models impact today's media landscape? James Gaskin, BYU business professor, does research on AI tools.
"We're shifting to a new state where not production company, not content creator, but consumer is now going to dictate or drive what media is produced," he said.
This shift is already being seen. The most viral videos that have come from this development have been from social media accounts holyvlogss and stormtroopersvlogs.
Both use VEO 3 to create videos of Bible characters or stormtroopers as if they were vlogging their everyday lives. All of it is generated from a text prompt to a video in just a few minutes.
With innovation comes concern. Education and awareness will be more crucial than ever with this changing media landscape,
"As soon as it's out there, it will be exploited," Church said. "That's just what happens with media and so media literacy is going to be more important than before."