Fully AI-generated math explainer videos are flooding YouTube
Wanted to set the record straight since most people seem (perhaps blissfully) unaware.
Over the last month or so, I've seen dozens of similar math videos pop up in my feed, usually containing an incomplete math statement in the thumbnail on a dark background, plus a catchy title. These are posted across many different channels.
The videos overall are very "clickable", which is why I was all the more disappointed that these appear to be basically ~100% automatically generated. The script has typical AI-isms, the voice is AI, and based on the rate of upload on these channels (one video a day!), the visuals are likely automated too by letting Claude Code or similar agents write Manim Python scripts, synced to the voice timestamps. At least the music is real, but that's because they ripped it from 3B1B.
Some people have picked up on this on the comments, and I've been part of some threads, but they get swiftly deleted by the uploader sadly. What remains is comments from the blissfully unaware.
Now, the question is of course, is this a problem? If these explain math concepts in an engaging way, does it matter how they are made?
This is for everyone to decide for themselves, but personally, I am bothered by it and won't watch these videos. They drown out the actually human-made stuff, and the videos themselves lack any sort of human touch and therefore original or creative explanations. Since it seems like this is just being done to farm views, watching these videos feels like I'm being attention-mined by some datacenter GPU. And, since these channels are being deceitful instead of disclosing their AI usage, I have no interest in supporting them.
