How we treat AI comfort content

After a long day at school, you open up TikTok and are immediately greeted by a satisfying honey-covered keyboard, soft whispers, and cute animals bringing you plates of food. With the prevalence of social media, comfort-inducing content is available at your fingertips. While these elements are intended to have positive impacts on individuals, the relief we feel remains hollow as we consume artificial mass-produced content designed to keep us engaged.

Comfort content to help consumers relax, such as ASMR, cute animal clips, and bedtime stories, have always been a popular staple of the internet, as they help reduce stress for viewers. In recent years however, AI-generated videos have slowly been infiltrating the feel-good content industry. While watching glass being spread on toast may seem harmless on the surface, AI content’s rise has led to concerns about authenticity, desensitization, and the displacement of real creators. If the use of artificial intelligence in writing is already criticized for taking away human creativity, then its presence in content creation should also be dialed back.

AI comfort content typically refers to videos or clips generated by artificial intelligence designed to make viewers feel calm, relaxed, and supported. At a glance, there is little distinction between AI-generated content and traditional comfort media: a relaxing ASMR voice, a sleepy cat resting by a tree with Lo-fi music in the background, or a bedtime story told by a gentle voice. However, the truth is that none of the AI content is real. There is no human behind the ASMR voice, no real cute kitty behind the camera, and no narrator presenting to the audience. Algorithms optimize everything to stimulate the brain and keep people hooked.

Even though AI comfort content is artificial, its rapid growth can be attributed to how people use the internet to relieve stress. Many people crave something soft and predictable. Unlike real creators, AI doesn’t need breaks, money, or any sort of creativity, allowing it to produce a surplus of content for people to absorb whenever they want. Furthermore, social media algorithms favor this type of content because it can hold viewers’ attention longer with its easy-to-consume format. For many users, especially students and younger audiences, it becomes background noise to help calm the mind.

However, AI comfort content’s rapid growth has created a number of concerns regarding ethicality, authenticity, and its effect on real creators. The first issue is misleading audiences. Most AI-generated videos do not explicitly state that they are artificially created, causing people to support and connect with something that isn’t real. One example of a clip that had the internet fooled was a viral video of bunnies jumping on a trampoline from the perspective of a security camera. The footage amassed over 200 million views before people began catching on. Videos like this highlight how AI-generated content has already begun blurring the line between imagination and reality.

“If a user were to see a video that was AI generated, they would likely skip it pretty fast. But, if there was no tag, they would be more likely to watch the video, be entertained by what they saw, and maybe even support the channel,” said Ryan Naini ’28.

The second issue is that AI content is replacing real creators. AI tools can easily replicate the cadence and style of human creators without giving them any credit or compensation.

Furthermore, the algorithms that artificial intelligence uses are trained on real human content, allowing for different styles, voices, and visuals to be adopted without consent. As a result, many artists, animators, and storytellers who share a genuine connection with their audience are losing their position in the algorithm to AI-generated slop. On the other hand, users who don’t put in the time or effort to make original content can easily gain followers and farm engagement by exclusively pumping out endless AI-generated clips. As people slowly accept mass-produced AI-generated content over genuine human products, real human creativity begins to get lost.

As AI-generated content continues to grow, it’s all the more important for us to think before liking and sharing. Being mindful about what we consume by asking ourselves if what we are watching was made with effort or if it’s just an industry plant helps protect creativity, human emotion, and authenticity online. Above all, we pay our attention to human creators who put time, thought, and meaning into what they put out. Next time you see an AI generated video, let the algorithm know that fabrication and content plagiarism is unwelcome by scrolling without interacting, or, even better, clicking “I’m not interested.”