A TikTok with over 2.4 million views begins with the title “POV: You wake up as a slave in 1800s America.”
@timeportals Pov: You wake up as a Slave ⛓️ #cinematic #history #film #ai ♬ original sound - History AI
Viewers “awake” to see their outstretched legs on the ground of a dirt-floor shack, before “blinking” and reappearing in a field, holding a basket of cotton, as other enslaved people toil under the eye of a “master.”
The video then contrasts a stew eaten on the floor with being forced to serve a white tableclothed dinner, before switching to a pair of hands tied to a wooden pole, a whip cracking in the background.
These POVs of some of history’s most brutal moments are racking up views on the site, with AI recreating experiences like dying in the Challenger space shuttle explosion, getting the call as a firefighter on 9/11, awakening in Hiroshima right before the U.S. drops a nuclear bomb, and spending a day as Anne Frank in the Holocaust.
@pastlifepovs POV: You wake up as Anne Frank in 1944 #historytok #history #ai #historyai #pov #worldwar2 #annefrank ♬ original sound - pastlifepovs
The accounts pushing the AI-generated POVs are racking up likes and followers, with many of the videos drawing tens of millions of views.
But they’re also unsettling users on the site.
“Did we really need this video bro,” asked one of the top comments on the slavery clip.
While many of the clips are rather innocuous, showing life as a peasant in Tudor England or giving a glimpse into Renaissance France through the lens of a rich person, others are far more gruesome.
One video shows life as a plague doctor, praying over piles of dead bodies and fiddling with human body parts covered in blood.
The videos can also be wildly inaccurate. In a 9/11 POV, it shows a building burning next to One World Trade Center, which was built after the Twin Towers collapsed, before showing it, too, aflame.
In the video of the Challenger explosion, it shows the space shuttle with icicles dripping down it, a misunderstanding of the frigid temperatures that led to a gasket failure.
The posts come from accounts like @timeportals, @animaze_ai, @the_pov_lab, and @pastlivespov. These accounts use these horrific moments in history to help sell AI advice and tools to go viral on TikTok with AI-generated content.
On a linked webpage, @timeportals promises clients “mastery” in AI video construction, offering a step-by-step guide for $36.99.
Pastlivespov sells a guide to "mastering viral TikTok AI content creation" for just €23.99.
And another plague video with 56 million views from @the_pov_lab of scrounging for food during the Black Death hypes how anyone can go viral with these, selling its course for $24.99.
But while a number of the videos have been praised for interesting and impossible looks into the past—Jesus in ancient Judea and Noah before the flood—many more people are skeeved out by the invasive nature of the videos.
In responses to the video of Frank by @pastlivespov, which shows her writing in a diary, eating a meal of toast and water, and staring at a ceiling before being found by Nazi soldiers, viewers deemed it over the line.
“I think we went too far with this one," said one.
“This was someone’s life...” added another.
Under TikTok’s current content guidelines on AI-generated posts, these historical POVs appear to be allowed.
The site only says that AI videos that profess to be “fake authoritative sources” are outright banned.
It encourages users to label their content as AI-generated, which many of these accounts don’t shy away from, given they are using the videos to sell AI tools.
TikTok also allows for graphic footage of events on its “For You” feed, as long as it is within “the public interest.” However, that policy appears to refer to legitimate footage. It’s unclear if these AI videos would run afoul of the policy.
With these AI tools offering millions of page views for a low price, copycat accounts have cropped up, trying to create their own viral content around historic tragedies. The sinking of the Titanic and life as a World War I soldier are two popular choices.
While the videos can be unpleasant, that hasn’t stopped TikTokers from finding humor in them.
In a video that shows a POV of a worker during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, one user said, “This explains why Chernobyl blew up. This guy has no idea what he was doing.”
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