Our fellow terminally online readers probably have seen this video, which originated on Chinese social media. In it, two guys who look at first like they are about to get into a fistfight suddenly break out into a romantic, yet slightly robotic tango dance routine. The next second, they pull a wine glass and a bowl of noodles out of nowhere. It really looks like it’s generated by AI, but it isn’t. It’s 100 percent human intelligence.
I recently talked to Tianran Mu, the 29-year-old Chinese creator behind the video (he’s the one holding the noodles), who said he was largely unaware of how far his AI imitation sketch had traveled. On X, two users who shared his video got over 11 million views combined. Other reposts racked up tens of thousands of likes on Reddit, TikTok, and Instagram. Mu, who has no presence on any of these platforms, had little knowledge about his virality outside China and had never been interviewed by international media.
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