Do viral AI POV videos spread inaccurate history? –

If you are a frequent TikTok scroller, you may be familiar with accounts like POV Lab and Time Traveller POV, which post videos showing the apparent point of view of different people throughout history.

From the Black Plague to the destruction of Pompeii, these videos show AI-generated environments, and in the words of Dan, the creator of POV Lab, they do so in order to make the “idea of seeing the past through a first-person perspective felt like a unique way to bring history to life.”

Dan and Hogne – the creator of Time Traveller POV – spoke to the BBC, with Hogne adding that his videos can teach people about “cool parts of history and can help them learn something new.”

Historians, however, are not very impressed with the videos. Dr. Amy Boyington called the videos ‘amateurish’ and pointed out inaccuracies such as train tracks running down a street in the middle of the Middle Ages.

Historian and archaeologist Dr. Hannah Platts is not a fan either, saying the videos ignore things we already know from history. “Because of Pliny the Younger’s eyewitness account of the eruption, we know it didn’t start with lava spewing everywhere, so to not use that wealth of historical information available to us feels cheap and lazy,” she said.

Despite not being accurate, the videos still earn millions of views on TikTok, indicating that they may have the power to manipulate how the public will understand history. But even with all that, historians still see merit in the videos, with Dr. Boyington saying they can act as a gateway to history.

So if you see and enjoy an AI POV video on your TikTok feed, be sure to read on.