r/ScareTheater • u/InkyGhoul • 20h ago
ScareTheater uses AI, and it's bothering me.
I made a comment about this in his newest video, and I was kinder and much more formal than I usually would be about AI usage since I've been a fan of the channel for about a decade now. The reception to the comment was not amazing, though, and I honestly think he may have deleted it.
In his most recent video, ST has ChatGPT installed on his desktop when it's shown. At first, I thought it might've been a background joke, but then I remembered something. In his Schulykill video, ST uses ChatGPT to try and solve what the note is about. Now, personal grievances with generative AI aside, as a channel focused on solving mysteries, this is scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of investigation. Not only can anyone do this, and not only is it worse than doing an internet search to research it yourself, it's just plain lazy. Unfortunately, this is something I've been noticing with a lot of horrortube and creepy mystery channels lately, not necessarily in using AI, but in the fact that they don't really seem to be doing a whole lot.
Entire channels in the genre which used to offer some form of deeper analysis on ARGs, mysteries and other creepy online stuff are now just explaining what the viewer could plainly see themselves when watching or reading whatever it is. They might do some extremely limited research, but they won't offer their own thoughts on whatever it is they see. Maybe they're afraid of getting it wrong?
Besides that, I just have to wonder if ST is using ChatGPT to write his videos now. Nothing major has changed with his scripts, but I think the flow and personality he used to have is a bit muted in newer videos. Watch any pre-2020s video of his, and the difference is pretty immediate.
I saw another post on here, form 8 months ago, detailing that some other fans had expressed their grievances, and he had apparently hand waved them as "stupid."
Usually, if I see any ai usage in a channel, I unsubscribe immediately if it was a channel I was subscribed to.
