‘Class clown’ says satirical AI videos are an extension o…

For a bit of a laugh, Travis Marshall uses artificial intelligence to create wacky videos about his hometown, but his light-hearted content also raises serious questions about reality in the age of AI.

The 10-second viral videos have millions of views with thousands of comments. (Instagram: Illawarra_travistyy's) Do you remember the class clown in school? Maybe you were the jester creating havoc to entertain, distract and amuse. Well, tradie Travis Marshall from Woonona in the Illawarra region of New South Wales is a self-proclaimed Aussie larrikin invoking jester's privilege. And now his use of artificial intelligence (AI) in satirical videos about his hometown is going viral, raising questions about trust, authenticity and reputation in the age of AI.

"I got the class clown award in year 12 at school, so I guess I was always a bit of a clown, and yeah, maybe that's showing in my work as well," Marshall said. Last October, the hobby videographer started using OpenAI's video generator, Sora2. "[That] made it easy to create videos, so I started mucking around with it," Marshall said. "I got some hate at the start, death threats, and stuff like that, but I think it's that AI is so new and maybe scary to them.

"Before Photoshop came out, people believed photos, but now, if you see a photo, that could be Photoshopped, right? "We're in that process of where AI is taking over, and video editing is becoming so easy for the public to manipulate. Marshall describes his videos as AI Aussie humour and takes no offence at the derogatory term "AI slop". "I see that on a lot of AI videos, it's common to call it AI slop, but I think the definition of it is a video produced easily without a lot of effort," he said.

"To be fair, there are a lot of teething [issues], and I like to get it to look as real as possible, especially when you're doing a location … but no, I'm not offended by the term. "I'm not trying to sell it as being real, but there are still people that fall for it and share it around." "They might watch it a third time and go, 'Oh, that's AI. Let's send this to such and such and see if they fall for it.' Travis Marshall creates content utilising video he shot with Sora2 input.

(Supplied: Travis Marshall) "You need iconic landmarks like Wollongong lighthouse because it stops people when they're scrolling, they see Wollongong and then something crazy happens, and it gets shared around from there," he said. Marshall's videos — which include a man wrestling a kangaroo outside a pub, a vehicle crashing into Wollongong Harbour and fishermen in a tinny coming up the Kiama Blowhole — have millions of views.

Cyber psychologist Oliver Guidetti from the University of Wollongong encourages audiences to check if content is labelled AI and ask not only how plausible the scenarios are, but also what the creator's intent is. "From what is publicly visible, this account frames the content as AI-generated and appears to operate in a satirical, exaggerated 'local news' style rather than with an explicit intent to deceive," he said.

"It's a machine we built to learn, but you can't tell it 'learn this, don't learn that', it doesn't work that way," he said. When Snoop Dogg "shared" Travis Marshall's video, did he think it was shot in real life? (Supplied: Travis Marshall) "I think that there has always been a major divorce between what we see on social media and what is actually happening in the world," he said. "Pre-AI, Photoshop created an augmentation of reality that caused young women to have body image problems, which caused genuine pathologies in a vast array of people.

"That's just one example of people seeing something on social media and extrapolating it to their lives." He says while there are positive applications for the technology, consumers are right to question how it is being used. "This gentleman is using the AI as an artistic medium, which is fantastic, but what effect is the AI going to have on us? "It can't really be captured in one particular avenue; it's going to be quite individual.

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