I’ve been a part of the editing community since 2016 and I have never thought to make the caption an essay about the piece of media I had already spent 5+ hours editing on. What do you mean I stayed up for hours trying to meet my deadline on a Dance Moms group collab and now I must write a four paragraph essay about the cultural impact of the show? Well, nobody does that. At least, not actually. AI captions accompanied by people stealing edits from editor’s accounts are becoming more popularized. People have found that if you take someone’s work and slap an emotionless and robotic summary of what the media is (sort of) about, it will do numbers for engagement. And unfortunately, it has. This is working for them. But this is terrible for us. As creatives, not only is our work being saved and re-uploaded without our knowledge, but it’s being associated with AI. The number one thing that’s quickly trying to replicate everything we do. If you didn’t think it could get worse…hold tight. These ‘film’ accounts that are stealing edits are putting the original creatives usernames after the meaningless and extremely long AI captions. So, not only are you not going to read the essay under the edit that’s not theirs, but you’re not going to know who made it!  With the lucky chance that an editor remembers to watermark their work, it is still up to that reposter to give the respective credit.  Which should be obvious right? But these accounts are run by people who don’t care about editing or the editor behind the video. Nor do they care about the film they’ve posted about or what is truly the message trying to be conveyed in the edit. These people are getting more recognition than the people who create these videos from their heart. I grew up getting bullied for having a passion like editing. In fact, a lot of us got made fun of it because fan editing was seen as strange and weird until recent years. I love that people have found out about it and realize the amazing advertising that it brings. But the people creating these works of art are just that…people. Credit and authenticity is so much more important than you think. 

-nene