If you’ve been on TikTok recently, chance are you've already been subjected to the latest trend in AI slop: AI ASMR videos. Yep, AI art is no longer assaulting our eyes but our ears too. Google Veo 3 has so much to answer for.
Like many AI art trends, the fad was inspired by real art. Good ASMR videos are little snippets of perfection. Spine-tingling sensory experiences that can make you reappraise the beauty of everyday moments.
The work of popular ASMR video creators on platforms like YouTube can be soothing, and often mesmerising, partly because you know the painstaking work that went into them, whether it was using a macro lens and complex tripod setup to capture a close up of a pen scratching on paper or using software like Blender to create a 3D model with realistic liquid physics.
AI now allows people to make ASMR videos that break the rules of physics without much work, but their aim seems to be completely different. We've even tried making our own ASMR AI videos to see how easy it is.
If you're not familiar with ASMR, it stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. ASMR videos use a mix of visual and audio stimuli designed to induce a strong sensory reaction. They often focus on simple but satisfying everyday actions: eating, tapping, whispering, the movement of a pencil or marker pen over paper. In many people, they produce a tingling, static-like sensation, which can be relaxing.
AI ASMR videos take the existing trend and carry it to surreal extremes, but they ditch the relaxing part. They're a horror show. People eat sizzling panels of honey and blocks of fired metal. They kneading molten lava and crush rocks that fail to respect the laws of physics. Its torture ASMR, but nobody gets hurt because they're not real.
The trend has been made possible by new, more accurate and consistent AI video models like Google Veo 3. But despite the leap in photorealism, with more realistic lighting and camera motion, the output is still very obviously AI. Objects don't behave as they should. They can change inconsistently from shot to another. And because it's all edited by AI, sound and image often don't match up.
They also lack any feeling of intimacy. Real ASMR videos feel like they're inviting you to be complicit in a secret. The feel personal and human even if the subject is an object or machine.
A lot of the AI ASMR videos on TikTok seem to be intended to trigger people in a different way. They aim to create an ambiguous feeling of surprise, disgust and fascination. It seems to work for some because these videos are getting thousands of views and likes. I find them ugly and repellent, and yet I want to keep watching to see if I find one either weirder than the last – and that's a deep and surreal hole to get sucked down.
Our 3D and digital art editor was even so intrigued, that he took on the challenge of trying to make an ASMR video in Google Veo 3 that actually works.
I'm guessing that these videos probably appeal to different people from traditional ASMR fans. The problem, like with so much of AI content on social media, is that they make it more difficult to find human-created content. I'm hoping it's a novelty fad that lasts no longer than the Chat GPT AI Ghibli trend.
For more AI tech news, see this week's launch of Adobe Firefly Boards, which looks like it could be a game changer for creative agencies.
