Videos made with OpenAI's Sora app are flooding TikTok, Instagram Reels and other platforms, making people increasingly familiar — and fed up — with nearly unavoidable synthetic footage being pumped out by what amounts to an artificial intelligence slop machine.

Digital safety experts say something else that is happening may be less obvious but more consequential to the future of the internet: OpenAI has essentially rebranded deepfakes as a light-hearted plaything and recommendation engines are loving it. As the videos race across millions of peoples' feeds, perceptions are being quickly reshaped about the truth, and soon, perhaps the basic norms of being online.

"It's as if deepfakes got a publicist and a distribution deal," said Daisy Soderberg-Rivkin, a former trust and safety manager

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