Children's cartoon videos of mass shootings transformed using AI tools are circulating, potentially evading social media moderation

A phenomenon called 'Minion Gore' has been confirmed, in which AI technology is used to convert real violent images into animations for children and posted on social media. The posted videos are violent live-action images that have been edited using characters from the animated film ' Minions ' without permission, and it has been reported that they are being spread by slipping through the monitoring of platforms.

'Minion Gore' Videos Use AI to Post Murder to Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube
https://www.404media.co/minion-gore-videos-use-ai-to-post-murder-to-instagram-tiktok-and-youtube/

According to 404 Media's investigation, Minion Gore's videos began spreading in mid-December 2024 and have been spotted on major social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and X.

The 'Minion Gore' phenomenon is said to have started with a video posted by a TikTok user on December 7, 2024. The video was just a Minion-style man dancing, but it was viewed more than 50,000 times in 10 days, and similar videos then spread rapidly, mainly among Russian users.

Particularly noteworthy was a video posted on December 14th, which was a video of a suicide posted on Facebook in 2020, edited to look like Minions. This video was played more than 250,000 times in three days, causing a huge reaction. After that, various violent content, such as footage of an elevator accident and the mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, was edited to look like Minions and spread.

Many of these videos bear a watermark from Runway, an AI video generation tool, with creators reportedly using the tool's Gen-3 'video to video' feature to transform the footage with prompts like 'make the clip look like one of the Minions animated movies.'

Each platform is taking measures against Minion Gore. TikTok has stated that it will remove any violent content that violates its community guidelines, even if it has been altered by AI, and at the time of writing, all of Minion Gore's videos have been removed.

What is worrisome is that this technique is beginning to be applied to other characters. According to 404 Media, similar videos using characters other than the Minions have already been confirmed, and there are concerns that the problem will spread. According to Professor Hany Farid of the University of California, Berkeley, current video recognition systems have difficulty detecting such AI-processed videos.

Experts have pointed out that this phenomenon could be a 'potential loophole in moderation,' and is drawing attention as a new challenge with the development of AI-based video processing technology. Each platform is working to update its detection systems and introduce new countermeasures, but the question for the future is whether they can keep up with the evolution of technology.