![\"\"](\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AI-version-of-Leo-Ryan-copy.jpeg\")
<\/a>The garish videos focus on a few recurrent elements: An audio recording of the deaths exists. The event was a mass murder and not a mass suicide. Jim Jones\u2019s manipulative abilities knew no bounds and would make a comic book supervillain envious. Rep. Leo Ryan was a near-mythic hero, with the square jaw and youthful vigor of a Hollywood leading man. Maybe the CIA was involved in some nefarious way.<\/p>\nAs you\u2019d expect, the titles are culled from a shuffled deck of sensationalistic, clickbait adjectives. A sampling: \u201cThe Chilling Jonestown Death Tape That Recorded 918 Deaths in One Hour<\/a>\u201d, \u201cThe Horrifying Truth About Jonestown: It Wasn’t Suicide, It Was Murder<\/a>\u201d, \u201cThe Congressman Who Walked Into America\u2019s Deadliest Mass Murder<\/a>\u201d, and \u201cCIA Watched Jonestown Build Death Camp<\/a>\u201d. You get the idea.<\/p>\n Though published by hundreds of channels of various ages, they share characteristics and, in some cases, are identical. They average about one minute in length and feature flat narration in varying accents giving quick factoids that are kinda, sorta, almost right if you squint hard enough. (Surely no one expected AI to correct the misnomer that it was Kool-Aid rather than Flavor Aid used in the poisonous drink.) Perhaps most puzzling, for the sheer laziness and irony, is that AI\u2019s versions of Jones run the racial gamut from White to Black, from vaguely Latino to ambiguously Asian. Whatever ethnic background you\u2019re prejudiced against, AI has a Jim Jones bogeyman tailor-made just for you. If Jones were somehow able to comment on his public perception in 2026, I\u2019d venture his vanity would be more offended over his image being used as racial fodder than he would be over his legacy as a deranged mass murderer.<\/p>\n Stripping aside pro-AI propaganda, dictating we ignorant Luddites toe the line or fall behind, what is it really for? The unsubtle mission of AI is to give the wealthy access to talent and creativity, while removing access to wealth from the talented and creative. Its foundation is to enrich someone or something with minimal effort. Along with that is its solipsistic staple of disregarding whatever larger harm is done in the name of profit. Considering that, the most baffling aspect of the videos\u2019 production emerges.<\/p>\n The majority of the channels that posted the shorts have very few subscribers, from zero to a few dozen, although a handful boast triple digits and go as high as 1,210. Many were created in the days immediately before posting its Jonestown video. Others launched more than a decade ago but had very little activity until recently. The videos themselves tend to get views in the single or low double digits, though a few tip into the hundreds. They do not feature ads. One of the first channels to share such a video \u2014 if not the<\/em> first \u2014 launched in 2015 and posted no content (another nausea-inducing word) until September 2025. The few that garner commentary from YouTube visitors indicate the AI-tableaus aren\u2019t being well received.<\/p>\n \u201cFor one that\u2019s not Jim Jones,\u201d reads one comment on that potential patient-zero video.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is so much incorrect in this video. Please take it down,\u201d reads another.<\/p>\n \u201cI’m a little,,, a lot offended by this. Jim Jones was not a man of color,\u201d still another.<\/p>\n YouTube maintains it is \u201capproaching AI responsibly.\u201d Yeah. Sure. OK. I\u2019ll take \u201cOxymorons\u201d for $600, Alex.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile we lean in to [sic<\/em>] AI\u2019s potential, we want to make sure we have the right protections and guardrails in place,\u201d the company states<\/a>. \u201cWe require that creators disclose when realistic content is made with altered or synthetic media, including Gen AI Labels may then appear within the video description information, and if content is related to sensitive topics like health, news, elections, or finance, we may also display a label on the video itself.\u201d<\/p>\n While I\u2019ve not watched every single one of these shorts, the ones I have do not feature disclaimers regarding their AI origins.<\/p>\n Publications like Forbes and 404 Media have been sounding the clarion call on AI\u2019s infestation of YouTube. The latter in February 2025 published an expos\u00e9<\/a> on a YouTube video titled \u201cHusband’s Secret Gay Love Affair with Step Son Ends in Grisly Murder\u201d about a homicide in Littleton, Colorado, amassing 2 million views. The video was one of about 150 entries on the channel True Crime Case Files.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the rub: the videos and the cases they detailed were entirely AI-generated.<\/p>\n Henry Larson, author of the 404 article, contacted the person who operated the channel, pseudonymously dubbed \u201cPaul.\u201d He defended his false creations by claiming they wouldn\u2019t draw many viewers unless they were labeled as true. (Think how engrossing the Coen Brothers\u2019 1996 film Fargo<\/em> is thanks to the title card asserting \u201cThis is a true story,\u201d despite the plot being entirely fictitious.) Paul brushed aside criticism by referring to his channel\u2019s content as \u201can absurdist art form.\u201d<\/p>\n Larson reached out to YouTube with questions about the monetization of Paul\u2019s videos and possible policy violations. YouTube terminated the channel for several violations of its Community Guidelines<\/a>, spokesman Jack Malon told Larson.<\/p>\n Malon did not provide answers before my deadline.<\/p>\n Forbes\u2019 article<\/a>, published days after 404\u2019s, was direct and prescient with its title: \u201cYouTube Is Flooded With AI Slop \u2014 And It Will Get Worse.\u201d<\/p>\n Paul\u2019s most popular video was \u201cnot an outlier,\u201d wrote Forbes\u2019 Dimitar \u201cMix\u201d Mihov. \u201cIt\u2019s merely another cancer cell swiftly spreading through YouTube\u2019s system. The tumor in the platform\u2019s blood is AI \u2014 and at this point, the damage might be irreversible.\u201d<\/p>\n As the article relates, Google had just launched an upgraded Dream Screen, \u201can AI-powered YouTube feature that lets users generate backgrounds for Shorts with text prompts.\u201d<\/p>\n Dina Berrada, the director of product, heralded Dream Screen\u2019s arrival<\/a>: \u201cNeed a specific scene but don’t have the right footage? Want to turn your imagination into reality and tell a unique story? Simply use a text prompt to generate a video clip that fits perfectly into your narrative, or create a whole new world of content. It\u2019s that easy!\u201d<\/p>\n With all this in mind, maybe it\u2019s more surprising (sorry, \u201cshocking\u201d to be trending in AI\u2019s hyperbolic lingo) that AI didn\u2019t swallow and digest the story of Peoples Temple sooner. That\u2019s not to say it hasn\u2019t been nibbling at it in recent years.<\/p>\n In November 2023, MLive.com published a series of articles I wrote on obscure Peoples Temple member Shirlee A. Fields<\/a>, her pharmacist husband, and their two children, all of whom died on November 18. The series\u2019 installments dropped on separate days. Almost immediately after each one published, I noticed something equally confounding and infuriating: A European-based website was auto-publishing AI-altered versions of my articles, bearing another journalist\u2019s byline and complete with AI-generated \u201cphotos\u201d of a jungle settlement in charred ruins.<\/p>\n The website is now defunct, which is good, but it amounts to a Pyrrhic victory.<\/p>\n Dr. Rebecca Moore addressed this phenomenon and other instances of AI, in its infinite ignorance, churning out inaccurate depictions of Jonestown in an October 2024 piece<\/a>. One of the most risible examples she found was an AI article that mistakenly described Chrissy Lampkin, the girlfriend of rapper Jim Jones, as the late wife of Peoples Temple\u2019s Jim Jones. Elsewhere in the same piece, Lampkin was described as having survived the massacre by being in Georgetown.<\/p>\n Never mind that Lampkin was eight years old when Peoples Temple ended or that she is still alive. The pro-AI camp would have us keep the faith, that this was an example of the system working out its bugs. Yeah, sure. But what this example signifies is that AI won\u2019t just contradict established facts. It will contradict itself, fashioning an ouroboros of misinformation and miseducation.<\/p>\n AI is learning, sure, but what is<\/em> it learning? To dumb us down even further, to muddy the waters, disseminate confusion and be the final nail in the post-truth\/alternative facts era? These videos\u2019 proliferation all but guarantees undiscerning viewers will walk away with erroneous impressions of Peoples Temple and Jonestown\u2019s historic importance. Can\u2019t you already envision the vitriolic online arguments, wherein someone will insist Jones was a mustachioed, besuited Hispanic man whose machine gun-toting Nazi guards killed a derby hat-clad Leo Ryan?<\/p>\n While working on this piece, I took in a screening of the A24 horror film Backrooms<\/em>. There\u2019s a line delivered by the movie\u2019s central character, describing the unreality of a convoluted liminal space presenting as a yellow-haze, fluorescent-humming office building: \u201cImagine describing a dog to someone who has never seen one before, and then asking them to draw it. It will look similar, but the devil is in the details\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Is there a better description of AI?<\/p>\n (Editor\u2019s note<\/strong>: An average of four \u201cnew\u201d videos emerged every day between mid-June 2026, when this article was published, and early August 2026. They have since disappeared altogether.)<\/em><\/p>\n (Cole Waterman<\/strong> is a Michigan-based crime reporter with a long-held interest in Peoples Temple and Jonestown who has submitted numerous primary source transcripts from the FBI\u2019s FOIA files to the site beginning in the fall of 2023. His complete collection of articles is here<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After circling the perimeter for a few years, AI slop has finally come to Jonestown. As if the 918 individuals who perished on November 18, 1978, warranted further indignity. Starting about April 19, YouTube has been inundated with brief, AI-generated videos summarizing Jonestown\u2019s final day in lurid fashion. The shorts multiplied like rabbits throughout May. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":51,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-138019","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/138019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138019"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/138019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138789,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/138019\/revisions\/138789"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>Some have imagery that could be briefly mistaken for photographs in that uncanny valley way, if you ignore the occasional extra hands of the people depicted or those drinking poison from the bottom of a glass. Most are animated in a range of diverse styles \u2014 Renaissance-era, Norman Rockwell-esque Americana, Pixar-aping CGI, fantasy, cartoon, comic book, anime. One even portrays babies being poisoned in vintage, 16-bit video game pixels. All are jittery and anxiety-inducing, the imagery trembling as though it was pumped full of caffeine or amphetamines.<\/p>\n<\/a>Jonestown itself is usually depicted as a small, thatch-hut community surrounded by jungle. In some clips, it\u2019s an American suburb seemingly air dropped onto a jungle-surrounded plateau; in others, it\u2019s an unabashed prison camp. The AI incongruity we\u2019ve come to expect often adds a church, community center, or modern hospital. Jonestown residents are bug-eyed and dripping in sweat, mouths agape and screaming. Members of Jonestown\u2019s security force (or Red Brigade) are disproportionately Black, clad in military-style uniforms and toting machine guns. Some wear Nazi regalia and have vampire fangs, which is somewhat fitting as the narration erroneously states the guards hunted down and executed Jonestown residents who fled into the surrounding jungle to avoid being poisoned. <\/a>Particularly tasteless \u2014 the word loses all meaning when discussing AI \u2014 is a cartoon image of a menacing face on a red plastic cup, poisoned punch splashed about it and surrounded by a shadowed mass of zombies. A few of the videos depict Jonestown\u2019s end as being razed to the ground in an apocalyptic fire.<\/p>\n<\/a>AI\u2019s iteration of Jones typically portrays him wearing a suit and tie, appearing respectable if on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Not always, though, for in some of the increasingly outlandish videos, he\u2019s clothed in attire suggesting the 19th Century or as far back as Classical Greece. In a few, he more closely resembles a beleaguered and disheveled David Koresh. At least one video gets it right that Jones died from a gunshot wound to his head rather than from cyanide, but immediately undercuts any points for accuracy by featuring an illustration of Jones still standing and raging with a bullet hole in his forehead. Weirdly, he has a mustache more often than he lacks it. I guess it\u2019s hard to be a mustache-twirling villain without the mustache\u2026<\/p>\n<\/a>This whole sad development was an inevitability, with the internet in general and YouTube specifically flooded in recent years with mindless, auto-generated content that is intended to\u2026? What? I don\u2019t know. Educate others? That thinnest of pretexts is hamstrung when the information offered has, at best, a 50-50 chance of being accurate. Maybe its purpose is to entertain? If that\u2019s the case, even a cynic like me shudders to consider the indictment that levels at the viewing populace.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>I reached out to Malon with some questions of my own in hopes of tracking down the videos\u2019 origins and how they\u2019re being monetized, if they are. I also asked if the videos are concerning, as several feature animation of children consuming poison.<\/p>\n<\/a>These videos\u2019 existence proves, as did Jonestown\u2019s own downfall, that what takes years of effort and work to build can be torn asunder, rendered null in a flash.<\/p>\n