I have to imagine there will be a rebellion against all of this at some point, when people simply can’t take the false realities anymore. What is the alternative? Ready Player One? The Matrix? Wall-E?

I am bullish on this, albeit with major concerns in many domains. It was fun and addictive as hell with images. With video it will be wild.

[1] https://hardwork.party/cheese/

The technology itself is super impressive, but a social media app of AI slop doesn't feel like the best use of it. I'm old enough to not really be interested in social media in general anymore, so maybe I'm just out of touch, but I just can't see this catching on. It feels like the type of thing that people will download, use a few times until the novelty wears off and then never open again.

I doubt it will be for the better. The ubiquity of AI deepfakes just reenforces entrenchment around "If the message reinforces my preconceived notion, I believe it and think anyone who calls it fake is stupid/my enemy/pushing an agenda. If the message contradicts my preconceived notion, it's obviously fake and anyone who believes it is stupid/my enemy/pushing an agenda.". People don't even take the time to think "is this even plausible", much less do the intellectual work to verify.

Today's Sora can produce something that resembles reality from a distance, but if you look closely, especially if there's another perspective or the scene is atypical, the flaws are obvious.

Perhaps tomorrow's Sora will overcome the the "final 10%" and maintain undetectable consistency of objects in 2 perspectives. But that would require a spatial awareness and consistency that models still have a lot of trouble with.