Mu isn’t the only comedian who has tried to emulate the style of AI-generated videos, but he really nails all the elements: the awkward body movements, spaced out facial expressions, and unpredictable plot development. Many viewers, myself included, were shocked by how accurately it captured the essence of the AI’s slop videos.
Mu tells me that the half-dozen AI impersonation videos he’s filmed represent only a small part of his acting career. He has wanted to become an actor since college and spent the summer after his freshman year at Hengdian World Studios, the world’s largest film studio, looking for acting opportunities. He began performing comedy sketches on Chinese social media in 2019, and content creation now takes up most of his time.
The success of his AI imitation videos landed him a sponsorship deal with a Chinese generative AI company, which paid him RMB 80,000 (about $11,000) to produce two more sketches promoting the company’s video model. It’s not a bad job, but I honestly expected Mu to have received more opportunities thanks to his global virality.
As part of the sponsorship, Mu shot two versions of the sketches, one incorporating AI-generated footage and one without. He secretly hoped that the announcer would choose the latter solution, because it highlights human acting skills. But the advertiser chose the one with AI. “It feels like it’s starting to steal jobs from human actors, doesn’t it?” Mu said.
Mu reappeared on my timeline last week when he posted a follow-up to his first series of AI impersonations, this time mimicking videos created by Sora, OpenAI’s latest generative video tool. His new video is much more subtle but still manages to capture that inexplicably unsettling feeling that persists even as AI videos become more advanced.
Mu says there’s a perpetual battle going on as AI speeds up, but it’s not man versus machine. Rather, the conflict is between humans and other humans who create AI models, and each side is constantly trying to improve. “We make fun of some of AI’s flaws, its weirdness and absurdity, but the creators of AI are probably improving them too. You see, this year’s AI already seems a lot more human,” Mu says.
How to act like AI
Before making his first AI imitation sketch in July 2024, Mu watched numerous AI videos to study their common traits. He wanted to understand the types of mistakes AI often makes, and then recreate them in his own scripts.
For example, when an object appears in the frame, the AI often misunderstands why it is there. For example, a hanger can be used to hang clothes, but it is also often the weapon of choice when Chinese parents physically punish their children. This dual usage inspired another video from Mu last year, in which, halfway through pretending to hit his “son” with a coat hanger, the boy’s shorts mysteriously come off, and Mu looks like he suddenly forgot what he was doing and decided to hang up the shorts instead.
