By Ari’ Browley
We are officially here, the highly anticipated era of technology that seemed so far in the future. Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm in recent years, dominating social media content, consumer entertainment, and soon Michigan’s infrastructure.
Today, people are accessing the power of AI at just the click of a button. With platforms like ChatGPT, SoraAI, and Seedance 2.0 gaining extreme popularity over time, AI-generated content is only becoming more accessible, common, and shared at alarming rates on social media.
With big companies like Google and Meta also taking advantage of AI, it’s becoming hard to escape, and even harder to differentiate between real and AI-generated videos.
Grand Rapids Community College students are starting to have troubling experiences with advanced AI content.
“This one kind of hits home,” Adrian Anderson, 18, from Grand Rapids, said. “My grandma was trying to watch “America’s Got Talent,” but she watched an AI video called Got Talent or something. I’m like, yo, that AI.”
Anna Tenissen, 19, from Sparta, has had a similar experience with AI content.
“I think it’s kind of scary,” Tenissen said. “Literally like a year ago, I was seeing stuff where it was like bad quality, and it was so obvious. And now there’s even times where I see a picture, and I’m like, oh, wait, that’s AI. It takes a double take now. So it’s a little concerning.”
Ricardo Ramirez, 21, from Grand Rapids, has also been deceived by online AI videos. “I have seen on social media so many different types of AI that just look way too real.”
Students give their personal opinions on artificial intelligence.
“I think it’s useful when used correctly,” Tenissen said. “I’ve used it for just summarizing information, just like making stuff a bit more comprehensible.”
Anderson does use AI for its academic resources. “I use ChatGPT for helping me out with homework,” he said. “I think when you’re using AI to help you out with homework or whatever, it’s cool, but using generative AI is kind of dumb.”
Ramirez explains his boundaries with AI usage.
“I do use ChatGPT, but it’s not to replace any of my personal work,” Ramirez said. “I’ve seen so many people use it for papers and all that other stuff. But personally I just don’t see the appeal in general. But when it comes to math and that type of problem, I think it’s helpful to get an understanding a bit better in case you’re just struggling with it. When it comes to actually replacing your work, I don’t like that.”
While Ramirez accepts AI as a tool, he opposes the technology’s other abilities.
“It replaces the integrity of what an actual person can do,” Ramirez said. “In general, like, when it’s used to create fake pieces of media with the videos and stuff, I don’t like that because it can cause some real serious issues. Especially when it can include you doing a malicious act, and that can put you into real harm.”
Isabella Novakowski, 19, from Grand Rapids, is against AI usage.
“I’m not too fond of it (AI) personally. I think that it is damaging to the environment, first of all, and people’s mental health and obviously stealing work for training data,” Novakowski said. “I think it’s pretty scary, and I think it’s scary at times the only way to know if something is AI is to use another AI to check.”
Michelle Rodgers, 29, from Zeeland, is also against AI.
“I’m anti-AI,” Rodgers said. “Mostly because of our environmental factors but I also just think it’s just kind of scary. I mean, we’ve all seen ‘I, Robot,’ right?”
Rodgers continues to find ways to avoid AI as it becomes a part of our daily media.
“I think it’s like in Safari when I do Google searches now,” Rodgers said. “In my downtime, I’m trying to research a different app I can download so I don’t have to use it at all.”
GRCC students were shown two clips from natural disaster videos, one being a real 2017 Tequila commercial and the other being a Seedance 2.0-generated video. All students were able to identify which video was AI, further explaining how they can distinguish between AI-generated and real content.
“I don’t know what it is for me. It’s like a giveaway,” Rodgers explained. “I feel like it’s very intuitive. Like I can’t pinpoint what it looks like, but it just, it just feels different. I don’t know.”
Rodgers reflects on the past, a time when AI content was easy to recognize.
“I remember when AI videos were like birds coming out of pictures, when people were using them for their LinkedIn stuff. There was like the hands were weird and like people were pinpointing it that way. But it’s definitely getting better to where I can’t give you a reason why it looks different. It just does,” Rodgers said.
Other students have learned to spot AI content through movements and expressions.
“The emotions and the expressions that the people in the video were showing, because sometimes you can tell when they get way too expressive. It’s like a hint,” Ramirez said.
“People were moving kind of weird, it looked like at times,” Novakowski said.
Tenissen also pointed out how people appear and act in AI videos. “The people, you can see it. They just look more robotic,” she said.
Artificial intelligence is improving at rates many people didn’t expect. Students predict what the future will look like if AI keeps advancing at this rate.
“I don’t know. I think it’s good but not super good,” Anderson said. “Legit, every time I can tell the difference if it’s (a video) AI or not. Once you can’t tell the human mannerisms and whatnot, yeah, that’ll be bad. But it’s not gonna get there until it actually gets there.”
Other students have more worries about an AI-led future.
”I think it’s kind of scary because it’s like a form of propaganda now,” Rodgers said. “I mean we already know that people don’t do enough research. People are very one-sided, like, quick to believe whatever they hear, and now that there’s all these AI videos. It’s like pushing that even further.”
Tenissen agrees that AI won’t be good for society.
“I think it’s gonna become prevalent, and it’s definitely gonna cause some issues I feel, but I hope that it doesn’t.”
Ramirez fears that AI will replace more human work than it already has.
“I’ve already seen with some articles that there are people that are replacing human talent with AI, and I have a fear that it’s just gonna keep happening,” Ramirez said. “There’s gonna be a point where humans are not even gonna be used for any actual skill for occupations. And it’s just gonna get significantly worse, especially with how it will affect the actual economy.”
Ramirez stresses that the integrity of human art is at risk as AI advances.
“I just don’t like it because people are using it to replace actual talent in the world,” Ramirez said. “Like with art and music and that stuff. Yeah, I just don’t like that. When it comes to actual uses, I believe it can be used, but it should not replace the creative work of a human person.”
Rodgers has similar concerns, highlighting the emergence of AI musical artists.
“I know that there’s an AI music artist, and I haven’t listened to it or anything, but I like this singer Kehlani, and she is talking about how that’s really concerning because what if it overshadows real talent,” Rodgers said.
“AI is basically taking in songwriter musical information, like people’s real experiences, and like writing music generatively. I think that is really weird too because AI has no experience to be able to communicate that artistically,” Rodgers explained. “So like if it has this ability to take from genuine artistry, it can deftly take away from regular jobs.”
As AI continues to advance, people have fears that it will dominate our future.
“I don’t know, it just seems really scary,” Rogers said. “A hopeful prediction is that enough of us come together to be like, we don’t want these data centers in our community. There’s communities already where it’s affecting their water supply and hopefully we could come together like we don’t want this; it’s got to go.”
On April 8, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer continued to voice her support for AI data centers across Michigan. “If we don’t do them here, they’ll be done elsewhere, and they’ll be done less smart, with lower wages in a way that abuses the natural resources and jacks up energy prices,” Whitmer said.
Whitmer’s commitment to building data centers is not new. In Dec. of 2025, Whitmer endorsed the OpenAI Stargate project, a plan that will help invest AI technology into Michigan’s infrastructure.
“The reality is data centers are going to be a big part of America’s future,” Whitmer said. “The question isn’t whether they will be built, but rather: Can Michigan benefit from these jobs and build data centers in a smarter way while upholding our strong environmental laws to protect our precious natural resources? We have an opportunity to do both. We can set an example for the rest of the nation on how to build these facilities the right way and grow our economy at the same time.”
Collegiate Reporter Yoyo Rodriguez-Vargas contributed to this story.
