Think Love Island is bad? Wait until you see the AI fruit version

3 days agoSakshi VenkatramanBBC NewsTikTok account ai.cinema021A screenshot from the viral AI TikTok series Fruit Love IslandA new bombshell has just entered the villa. He's 24-years-old from Barcelona, and he's a plum. That's not a figure of speech. He's a plum - like the fruit. And that's just one piece of TikTok's newest obsession, an AI-generated series called Fruit Love Island.Launched less than a month ago, Fruit Love Island is perhaps the first super viral show created entirely by generative AI. It's designed to mirror the hit ITV reality dating show "Love Island", but instead of people on the island, the characters are talking fruit. The plum from Barcelona is named Plumero. There's also Watermelina, a watermelon, a banana named Bananito, and Cherrita, who is a cherry. Posted daily on TikTok, the nonsensical one minute-long episodes featuring this juicy cast have attracted hundreds of millions of viewers in a matter of weeks. They've also brought 3.3 million followers to the anonymous account that posts them: ai.cinema021.It's dividing people online. Many say it's yet another example of low quality "AI slop" churned out by faceless accounts. But the videos still have gained a serious and dedicated fanbase.Celebrities like singers Joe Jonas and Zara Larsson say they have tuned in to the viral series."Sorry I can't hang out today, I gotta see what's happening with choclatina and strawberto," Larsson wrote under a TikTok post, which she later deleted after backlash from fans. "I'm worried about watermelina," Jonas wrote in the comments of one of his TikTok videos.Like in Love Island, the characters compete for a chance to couple up and stay on the island. This leads to arguments, romances, breakups, and even physical brawls in each episode - all against a backdrop that's uncannily similar to some Love Island scenes. ITV, the studio that created Love Island, has not responded to the BBC's request for comment. But the mystery creator of Fruit Love Island revealed that several episodes were removed by TikTok- it's unclear why. The same content is now being offered on YouTube. Some of the former cast members from Love Island USA also weighed in. Amaya Espinal, the winner of season 7 who was nicknamed "Amaya Papaya", expressed her distaste at the AI fruit re-creation of the show she starred in just last year."No I don't watch Fruit Island, I would never watch Fruit Island," Espinal said during a livestream. "I don't support it...That's too crazy."AI food content has been a fixation on TikTok for months now, with several accounts capitalising on the viral-bait. Espinal drew attention to a separate account where an AI papaya character named "Anaya Papaya" - already apparently spun off from the new Fruit Love Island series - is seemingly modelled after her. That account has gained 33,000 followers in just five days."She's my enemy," Espinal joked. Two stars of Love Island USA season 6, Kaylor Martin and JaNa Craig, seemed to enjoy the content, laughing along with an episode and filming themselves for TikTok. "Why is this a thing?" Craig asked. Many fans on TikTok are fully engaged with Fruit Love Island, voting for which fruit couple is their favourite, who they want to see leave the island, and anticipating the next episode. While it's certainly the most viral, Fruit Love Island is also not the first TV series to be recreated in AI fruit (if you can believe it). There's also Fruit Paternity Court, a spoof of Lauren Lake's Paternity Court, and The Summer I Turned Fruity, a recreation of The Summer I Turned Pretty. But not everyone is impressed. Some social media users and experts say these AI takes on popular shows are nothing but cheap entertainment preying on shortened attention spans. Jessa Lingel, a digital culture and technology expert at the University of Pennsylvania, said the content is first and foremost "bad"."It's pretty poor quality in the way we always see with AI slop," Lingel said. "The amount of work we're supposed to put in as humans keeps getting shorter and shorter. Now you don't even have to watch a whole episode of reality TV, you have a shortened, sensationalised AI slop version."The anonymous creator behind the popular videos defended Fruit Love Island in a post on TikTok Thursday, saying hours of work go into each video. "I write the scripts, I plan the scenes, and keep redoing things because the AI generation messes up constantly," they wrote.However, critics online say animation like that of Fruit Love Island has "no soul" and is not worth the potential negative impacts AI could have on the world. "This is why the earth is dying btw," one commentor wrote under a Fruit Love Island video.One study estimates that AI-driven data centres could consume 1.7 trillion gallons of water globally by 2027."We're using massive amounts of resources to create content that doesn't actually have a message or isn't pushing the conversation forward," Lingel said. There's a role for AI that does important work, like preserving ancient languages or aiding in cancer research, she said. "But this AI is not that," she said. "This AI is just putting junk out there."