actually I hope photorealistic AI takes off and keeps getting better and cheaper
only so people will stop needing to abuse actual animals to create Heartwarming Content like "dog rescued from canal it was just thrown into" or "still very wet and lively 'beached' shark returned to water"
there's less harm in "these two animals of different species are best friends!" videos, but fyi we long ago exhausted the supply of times that happened in real life and now are on to consulting viewing statistics before deciding to plop a duck on a horse or a cat on a pig and take some clips of the 15 seconds that they kinda tolerate it
(as a very particular hobby horse of mine: guinea pig babies do not ride on their mothers' backs! every cute picture of a baby guinea pig on top of its mom is staged! it doesn't hurt them so whatever, they'll just slide off in a second, but fyi, they don't do that by themselves)
I've never lived in a time when all media was authentic, but the industrial pace and scale of fake content production is something new to the last decade or so, I think