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Upcoming video: exposing fake Incan history.

5 days ago | [YT] | 141

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A video on American daredevil pilot Ormer Locklear, by ‪@HistoricalDetour‬.

1 month ago | [YT] | 13

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Another good video from ‪@HistoricalDetour‬.

1 month ago | [YT] | 13

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YouTube now requires content creators to disclose a wider range of synthetic content. This is no longer an opt-in choice, it's compulsory. I am delighted to see this, and I wonder how it will impact the long list of AI history YouTube channels I've been documenting, most of which do not disclose their synthetic content.

1 month ago | [YT] | 288

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An odd tale from ‪@HistoricalDetour‬.

1 month ago | [YT] | 19

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The channel‪@ProfessorDaveExplains‬ has a deep dive into pseudo-archaeologist Jimmy Corsetti.

1 month ago | [YT] | 18

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‪@HistoricalDetour‬ discusses the Brazilian cowboys.

2 months ago | [YT] | 18

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‪@HistoricalDetour‬ has a good video on the unfortunately named fifteenth century knight Andrew Trollope.

2 months ago | [YT] | 19

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I apologize for the lack of content recently. I've been incredibly busy with work since it's that time of year, and I've been researching AI channels to start a series on AI in history YouTube, for which I have already recorded interviews with a dozen genuine history channels.

I have noticed a huge increase in AI channels this year, and World War 2 and the Cold War have become highly targeted niches. I have found at least a dozen such channels thus far, hardly any of which are complying with YouTube's requirement to identify AI generated content. I have listened to many hours of this content to confirm they're AI and identify common patterns.

Common features include:

* clickbait titles and thumbnails

* they were started in the last 12 months or switched content recently; for instance, Untold WW2 Stories was started in 2008 and has three generic videos on IT topics, then no videos published until four months ago

* they pump out 3-5 videos a day, from 20-60 minutes in length; long form videos of over 40 minutes are very common

* scripts, voice, thumbnails, and images are obviously AI generated; many of the images are bad AI with clear absurdities, many of the scripts are highly formulaic and more dramatized than historical and the AI voicing often has obvious errors such as mispronunciations or weird audio glitches

* no timestamps, very generic video descriptions, little or no interaction with comments, and when there is interaction very often it's clearly just generic AI responses

Here's a list of such channels I've found so far.

* Tales of Valor
* Vintage Planes
* WW2 Untold
* WW2 Records
* Inside WW2
* Forgotten Allies WW2
* Shadows of Conflicts (150 videos uploaded since November 2024)
* Forgotten Battles (111 videos uploaded since April 2025)
* Untold WW2 Stories (183 videos uploaded since September 2025)
* Cold War Impact (149 videos uploaded in the last month)
* Real War
* Legacy Tales
* The Steel Spirit

Some videos on these channels have comments identifying historical errors, which is good, but it's horrific to see how much traction they're getting regardless.

I have linked to an excellent video here on this phenomenon by a real channel, ‪@WWIIUSBombers‬, which not only calls out a half dozen of these channels but fact checks a video from one of them to demonstrate how poor it is.

2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 69

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Another interesting video from ‪@HistoricalDetour‬.

2 months ago | [YT] | 16