The latest installment in a long line of examples of A.I.-generated garbage that makes you wonder how and why anyone thinks this is the future of content is a video of a bunch of gymnastics clips that look like the stuff of nightmares.


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The video shows headless gymnasts falling onto moving balance beams, multi-armed and multi-legged monstrosities and essentially no good examples of an A.I.-generated gymnastics routine. The OP, a tech investor, joked, “Gymnastics is the Turing test of video generation models,” and he’s not wrong — with these results, it would appear A.I. isn’t particularly close to passing its own version of the Turing test just yet. Gymnasts’ jobs are safe for now!



One person in the replies argued that on the contrary, A.I. will soon be able to pass the test, citing the above video of spaghetti noodles dancing as proof. OP argued that the video wasn’t proof of their claim because, “Anchoring to an existing video is a bit of a hack imo — not truly generative, but impressive nonetheless.”


The gymnastics video was made using Luma’s Dream Machine, an A.I. model that claims to make “quality, realistic videos fast from text and images.” I’m going to need a fact check on those claims of “quality” and “realistic.” As things stand, it would appear that A.I. does a better job of generating abstract videos like dancing spaghetti than anything close to reality. Evidently, we’re still at the stage of generative A.I. where common everyday things like human hands — or, in the case of the gymnastics videos, human bodies in motion — are enough to throw a wrench in the works, which is great news for anyone worried about A.I. coming for their job, frankly.


In addition to looking ridiculous and negatively impacting the environment, videos like this completely miss the entire point of things like watching gymnastics — the enjoyment comes from knowing that somebody trained for years to perfect their form and their routines and marveling at things the human body is capable of. Generating gymnastics routines, or even dances (spaghetti-based or otherwise), strips them of that crucial human element, as all A.I. does.


In true capitalist form, however, tech bros don’t care: Their priority is technological advancement and profit. Who cares about human expression and achievement in comparison?