Veo 3: AI's Visual Revolution & The Return to Text

TL;DR

Google's Veo 3 is so realistic it's unnerving. As AI video floods the internet, our trust may shift from pixels back to verified text. #VentureStep #AIVideo #Veo3

INTRODUCTION

The recent release of Google's Veo 3 has created a shockwave across the internet. This AI video generation model produces content so hyper-realistic and captivating that it has left many people stunned, and even a little unsettled. The advancement is so significant that it's forcing a broader audience to confront a reality that tech insiders have seen coming: AI is progressing at a rate far faster than anyone anticipated, and its impact is no longer a distant concern. The line between what is real and what is generated is becoming impossibly thin.

In this episode, Venture Step host Dalton Anderson dives deep into the capabilities of Veo 3, showcasing incredible examples of AI-generated short films that demonstrate its power. From character consistency to native sound effects and voice generation, this technology solves many of the critical limitations of its predecessors. Dalton shares his own experience showing the technology to a friend who simply could not believe the people in the videos weren't real, highlighting the profound psychological shift we are all about to face.

But beyond the "wow" factor, Dalton presents a compelling thesis about the future of digital trust. He argues that as our social media feeds fill with AI-generated content, our trust in casual video and images will inevitably erode. This erosion, he predicts, will trigger two fundamental shifts: a move toward ID-verified online profiles to prove authenticity and a surprising return to text as the preferred medium for trustworthy communication.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Google's Veo 3 represents a monumental leap in AI video, introducing features like longer video durations, native audio generation, and consistent characters, which are essential for compelling storytelling.
• The hyper-realism of Veo 3 is accelerating public awareness of AI's rapid advancement, blurring the lines between reality and fiction and creating a new set of societal challenges.
• As trust in visual media declines due to the proliferation of AI-generated content, there will likely be a significant move toward ID-verified social media accounts to establish authenticity.
• Dalton Anderson theorizes that the erosion of trust in video and images could lead to a cultural shift back to text as the primary medium for reliable online communication.
• While AI tools like Veo 3 democratize content creation for filmmakers and artists, they simultaneously force a critical conversation about digital identity, misinformation, and the future of media consumption.

FULL CONVERSATION

Dalton: Welcome to Venture Step podcast, where we discuss entrepreneurship, trends, and the occasional book review. Today, we will be discussing the recent release of Veo 3, a model created by Google. ¹This has been a really good and industry-leading model, but some recent releases make this model very captivating and hyper-realistic—and potentially unsettling, depending on who you ask. ²I think the general sense of the Veo 3 release is wow, AI is advanced and moving much faster than I ever anticipated. ³

The 'Wow' Moment: When AI Becomes Indistinguishable

Dalton: People have been talking about this AI doomer-gloomer vibe for a while, but then they kind of put that on the back shelf. ⁴ They're like, it's whatever. I've heard about it for years and it's not doing anything. ⁵ Look at it, it still sucks. And then they see this Veo 3 and they're like, my goodness, what is that? ⁶I showed this to a friend and gave him very little background about it. ⁷I showed him this video and was like, "Hey, what do you think?" ⁸And then later on, I told him that it was AI. ⁹

Dalton: He's like, "Wait, wait a minute. Where are these people from?" He kept asking. 10And I was like, "What do you mean, where are the people from?" 11He's like, "Well, I don't know. Are they getting them from other videos? They're taking them and then putting them in the video. Are they getting these people from YouTube?" 12And I was like, "They're not getting them from anywhere." 13And he's like, "No, they're getting them from somewhere." 14

I was like, "No, these are all AI. Like this is all AI. I mean, it's trained on videos that have people in it, but these are all unique people for this video." And he was just like, "This doesn't make any sense." ^15151515

Dalton: I think people are starting to realize how advanced this whole AI thing is. ¹⁶ AI is much more advanced than people are giving it credit. It still has limitations for sure, but it's progressing at a rate that is unprecedented for many technologies. ¹⁷

A Thesis on the Future of Digital Trust

Dalton: My hypothesis and thesis is that since AI is progressing so rapidly, people aren't going to be able to know—and people already have a hard time differentiating what is real and what is not real. ¹⁸But then when you add in these AI components and this ability to iterate fast and tell stories, it's a slippery slope for scammers. ¹⁹In my mind, people are going to become more centered around text and ID verification. ²⁰

Dalton: I mentioned this before on my episode 63, The Imperfect Echo: AI Cloning and Its Current Limits. ²¹In that episode, I had cloned my voice, and for the first seven or so minutes, that wasn't me. ²²It was a version of me, but it was artificially generated. ²³And unless I really told you that it was AI-generated, people didn't know. ²⁴

What Makes Veo 3 a Game-Changer?

Dalton: So Veo 3, what's the difference from Veo 2? ²⁵Veo 2 was incredible. ²⁶It was the best on the market. ²⁷But the fundamental issue with Veo 2 was that the video durations were short. ²⁸The ability to have native sound and voicing and consistent characters—those are a couple of crucial items. ²⁹

Dalton: The other piece that was an issue was consistent characters. ³⁰That's a bit odd, but consistent characters are important when you're telling a story, right? ³¹If a person is doing something and you want to tell a story like they go to work and then come home and their house is burned down, it takes them a while and it shows the hard work and determination. ^32323232

That only works if it's the same person every time. If there's not the same person, then it's a little bit more difficult for people to be captivated by the story because people attach themselves to certain characters. ³³

Dalton: So you needed a consistent person. ³⁴You needed voice generation, really, for the video. ³⁵Before you needed voice overlays; now you don't. ³⁶And now it also generates the sound effects. ³⁷It's pretty insane, actually. ³⁸

From Plastic Babies to AI Afterlives: Veo 3 in Action

Dalton: I have some really cool videos that were put together on the X platform. ³⁹If you are listening on Spotify or YouTube, you can toggle to the video option and see what I'm sharing. ⁴⁰If not, I'll make sure to copy the video links and put them in the show description. ⁴¹

Dalton: The first one I'm gonna share was a video that my friend Tom sent. ⁴²The video's title is "This is Plastic," made with Veo 3. ⁴³It's by Metapuppet, and it makes sense that he's part of this AI studio that is using AI to build original content. ⁴⁴

(Video "This is Plastic" plays)

Dalton: So good. That was an original AI-generated content only made with Veo. 45If you didn't follow what that video was about, it was basically something on TV that says microplastics are found in men's testicles, and a man's drinking out of a water bottle. 46Then his partner is pregnant, and their baby is plastic. 47And that's why at the end of the marketing video in the boardroom, they're like, "I just felt bad for him." 48

Dalton: And then there's also this other one by Hashim Al Ghali. ⁴⁹And this one is "The Afterlife: The Unseen Lives of the AI Actors Between Prompts," made with Veo 3. ⁵⁰

(Video "The Afterlife" plays)

Dalton: It's pretty well done. The music in the background reminded me of the Westworld intro and overall a captivating story about what happens to the actors that are created when you create a scene and they go to the void. 51

AI as a Co-Pilot: Enhancing Live-Action Film

Dalton: To bring it all in, there is a studio by Dave Clark. ⁵²He's the co-founder and the chief creative officer of Promise AI. ⁵³That Metapuppet person that made the plastic video is also part of this Promise AI studio. ⁵⁴

I think it's never been more exciting to build today than it has been ever. The ability for you to have a voice and to do something that you're interested in, you've never had this ability before. ⁵⁵

Dalton: This NinjaPunk IP that's being created at Promise AI is a video that was AI-assisted. ⁵⁶There are live actors, and then there's also AI built in with the live actors to enhance the scenes. ⁵⁷They really focus on using AI to generate characters and world-building and help create costumes. ⁵⁸ This is AI partnering with live actors, and the results? Chef's Kiss. ⁵⁹

(Video "NinjaPunk" trailer plays)

Dalton: So that was this AI-partnered original content generation. And it's really good. 60 Incredible. It scratched that itch of Altered Carbon. 61 Yeah, very good. Love that show. 62

The Trust Crisis: Where Do We Go From Here?

Dalton: Of those videos I showed, I think a lot of people are going to be concerned about, "Okay, well, how do I know what is real or not?" ⁶³Where will we be in two years? ⁶⁴Two years is not that long. ⁶⁵And where we are now is where people think that we would have been probably in 15, 20 years. ⁶⁶

The timelines of which people are predicting these things to progress and the rate that they're progressing are way off, way off. And people weren't paying it any mind. ⁶⁷

Dalton: The premise of the episode is basically to illustrate that Veo 3 is cracked and this is something where it's getting a broader audience. ⁶⁸This is more of a general public video consumption, and it's freaking people out. ⁶⁹People are getting freaked out, and rightly so. ⁷⁰I think long-term there are going to be two fundamental shifts, potentially. ⁷¹

Verifying Reality: The Rise of ID-Verified Accounts

Dalton: One, I think there's going to be more of an emphasis on ID-verified Instagram accounts. ⁷²In a general sense, there's going to be a shift from these anonymous social media presences to a more professional presence, back to when people were a little bit more serious about social media. ⁷³Maybe like 2012 to 2016, where people had their first and last name as their Instagram handle or Twitter handle. ⁷⁴I think it's going to go back to a professional presence because people aren't going to trust some anonymous account. ⁷⁵They're just going to think it's a bot. ⁷⁶

Dalton: If you don't want to be determined to be a bot, then you're going to have to make your name your name. ⁷⁷And then you're also probably going to have to verify with your ID. ⁷⁸I know X is doing that for their premium accounts and they have been for some time. ⁷⁹

Will We Shift Back to Text?

Dalton: The next thing that I think is a general shift is I think the preferred medium of consumption is going to shift from videos and images back to text, for casual content. ⁸⁰I think people years from now are going to have a hard time differentiating what is real, what is fake. ⁸¹And when everything you see is questionable, then what's the point? ⁸²

If everything that you're seeing on social media is just like these AI videos that were created, then what's the point? ⁸³

Dalton: I think people are going to become more comfortable with text because text is fine and dandy. ⁸⁴An AI-generated video is way different than AI-generated text. ⁸⁵People are just going to become very wary of random things that they see on social media now because they just don't trust it. ⁸⁶

Dalton: I think there's going to be a knee-jerk reaction when these things start flooding social media. ⁸⁷And after that happens a couple of times, they're like, "All right, you know what? I'm out. I'm not doing this video stuff anymore. I can't trust this stuff." ⁸⁸It's going to be interesting how it all plays out. ⁸⁹I hope that you found this podcast exciting. ⁹⁰As always, wherever you are in this world, have a good day, a good morning, good afternoon, good evening. ⁹¹Thank you for tuning in and I hope that you listen in next week. ⁹²Goodbye. ⁹³

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Veo 3 (Google AI Model)
• Veo 2 (Google AI Model)
• X (Social Media Platform)
• Metapuppet (AI Creator)
• Hashim Al Ghali (AI Creator)
• Promise AI (AI Studio)
• Dave Clark (Co-founder & CCO of Promise AI)
• Tom Mercer (Friend of the show)
• NinjaPunk (Original IP by Promise AI)
• Altered Carbon (Netflix Show)
• VentureStep Episode 63: The Imperfect Echo

INDEX OF CONCEPTS

Dalton Anderson, Veo 3, Veo 2, Google, AI video generation, consistent characters, voice generation, Metapuppet, This is Plastic, Hashim Al Ghali, The Afterlife, Dave Clark, Promise AI, NinjaPunk, sci-fi world building, AI-assisted filmmaking, ID verification, X, Elon Musk, Instagram, The Imperfect Echo, Altered Carbon, Netflix, HBO Max, Tom Mercer