Real musicians fought against things like rhythm boxes (later called drum machines), synthesizers and samplers. Today, these technologies are accepted even though somewhere out there a violinist is getting less work because a sampler/synthesizer can be “good enough” on a recording. And, well, drummers may be having the hardest time of all of musicians…

But I digress.

I have discussed the “A.I. is a tool” topic in the past. The better technology works for the untalented, the more impressive it will be when guided by someone who knows what they are doing.

And then there are videos… No one really knows what makes them popular.

A crappy cell phone video can go viral and be seen tens of millions of times. Meanwhile, a whole team that put together an Oscar-worthy short film gets a few hundred views. Your talent means nothing if no one sees it. Getting lucky is still a more powerful way to be seen.

And editing videos? Yeah, some folks do really crappy editing jobs, and get tons of views, while someone who does professional-level editing may produce content no one cares about.

Insta360 is about to give the folks who do really crappy editing a new robot to do their editing for them:

Be on the lookout for more cookie-cutter videos that seem like they were all made by the same editor. Because they will be. Bleep, bloop.

Sure, this will give people with really poor editing skills the ability to have highly polished robot-looking edits done on their footage. It might even produce better results than some skilled editors.

But much like clip art and stock music, once we start seeing it over and over (and over), it will just be another example of “A.I. slop” to many.

But it sure is going to be fun to play with until folks get sick of “the look.”

Then we will need a name for it. “A.I. slop edit?” Comment away if you have some ideas…