BioWire Bytes 012 - AI Videos are Reaching a Realism Inflection Point
Byte-sized biotech
Over the past week, a video of cute bunnies bouncing on a backyard trampoline went viral on social media. I embedded the video directly below so you can quickly view it. It originated on TikTok, where a user named @rachelthecatlovers posted what looked like home security camera footage of a fluffle (yes, that’s the word for a group of rabbits) playing on a trampoline and quite frankly, having the time of their lives. The clip is admittedly pure internet gold, it’s a wholesome moment of wildlife playfully “performing” for the camera. Within days it has amassed over 200 million views on TikTok, as people cooed over how lucky it was to catch such a scene on film. News outlets and social media reposts helped it explode in popularity, and comments poured in about how “unbelievably cute and lucky” this footage was.
The viral trampoline video showing several bunnies bouncing while being recorded by a ring doorbell.
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It all seemed too perfect. And it was. Well, sort of… If you watched closely, a few anomalies popped out: one of the three bunnies vanishes mid-jump, and another oddly morphs in shape. The lighting and resolution flicker at moments, and an unnatural blur trails the bouncing bunnies. These subtle glitches give away the truth that this isn’t authentic Ring camera footage at all, but an AI-generated fake. In reality, no actual rabbits were performing acrobatics that night; a creative human (and algorithm) were behind the spectacle. The TikTok account itself was brand-new with only a handful of posts (mostly AI-crafted), which is another telltale sign. In short, millions had been fooled by bunny “deepfakes.”
An Inflection Point for AI Videos
I have been watching as generative AI photos and video get better and better. For some time now, I felt that some of these videos are at a stage where many AI videos are difficult to distinguish from reality. This viral video is another such case. At first glance, it’s strikingly real enough to fool many of the 200+ million viewers, as you can see by the comments. We’ve entered a new era where AI-generated videos can go viral and largely pass as genuine,. at least at first. Just a couple of years ago, obvious visual artifacts or goofy-looking animations made most AI fakes easy to spot. Today, however, the tech has advanced so far that it requires close attention to detail to determine what is real. As tech writer Shelly Palmer joked after realizing the trampoline video was fake, “whether trampoline bunnies are real or fake doesn’t impact my day, but the fact that most viewers thought it was real is what’s worth examining”. This fluffy viral prank underscores a serious trend: AI is blurring the line between reality and fabrication like never before.
This isn’t an isolated case. After the bunny clip blew up, a wave of copycat AI videos followed with dogs, deer, bears, even raccoons, where they are similarly “spotted” by a ring camera bouncing on trampolines in various spoof videos. One TikTok creator has a whole series of AI-generated animals appearing where they don’t belong, like a dog bringing home exotic creatures. Some are obvious fakes (a golden retriever dragging in a zebra), but others are startlingly lifelike. In one viral example, a dog “brings home” a bear cub and waits at the door; the footage looked so authentic that it racked up over 7 million views, fooling many. We need to develop a new intuition and skepticism for virtual content.
In the end, the bouncing bunnies will probably just be remembered as an example of 2025’s digital zeitgeist. It gave us a laugh, and perhaps a bit of secondhand embarrassment (“I can’t believe I fell for AI bunnies!”) without any real harm done. But it also comes with a lasting lesson. As AI technology hits an inflection point where fake videos can mimic reality almost perfectly, our collective media literacy has to rise to the challenge. Particularly as we are inundated with “AI slop” before society learns to adapt. We’ll need to approach viral videos with healthy skepticism.
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Not to brag, but I thought the trampoline rabbits were obvious bullshit. For one thing, they're not cottontails but some breed of large domesticated rabbits, possibly Flemish giants. Who in suburbia has all those giant rabbits, and who'd let them wander the yard all night? For another, it's not possible to herd rabbits any more than it is cats. Whether it was AI or CGI, it had to be faked.