From barbecues with the builders of the pyramids to real-time accounts from Noah’s Ark, passing through the Napoleonic wars, social media has been invaded by ultra-realistic artificial intelligence videos from Google’s Veo3. In the tool, people can, from a single prompt, create 8-second videos, or use “Flow,” in which there’s a sequence of scenes with the same character at the centre of the screen.

But while the technology is impressive, the opposite effect is alarming and is linked to product reviews. Thousands of AI videos are being generated and used on product sales pages, attesting to the quality of an item after purchase. Since the result is very close to reality, with voices and ambient sounds, the testimonial comes across as something genuine:

“Unfortunately, there’s also the dark side of technology, such as the use of AI to deceive people who are looking for reviews to decide whether to buy or not. When there are many testimonials, the consumer ends up being convinced,” says Hallana de Ávila, Traffic Manager at KAKOI Comunicação.

Since 2023, some celebrities have been used in online scams with promotions, pix payment requests, and links that steal people’s data. A strong consumer awareness campaign by brands tries to “teach” people to identify something fake from something real, but with the advancement of AI, the battle seems to be being lost:

“There needs to be unity among brands and big techs, as well as public awareness, so that there aren’t so many scams in the market. On a testimonials page, for example, some signs are quite visible — the video length, generic testimonials with mistakes, and social accounts with little or no activity. These are the so-called red flags we need to watch out for,” concludes Hallana.