Deceitful AI Videos Mislead Seniors on Important Health Issues

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https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-health-and-nutrition-pseudoscience-technology/deceitful-ai-videos-mislead-seniors-important-health-issues

Deceitful AI Videos Mislead Seniors on Important Health Issues
The script, visuals, and voiceover narration are generated by AI, and so are the fake studies brought up as evidence.

Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. | 11 Dec 2025

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It was after delivering a lecture to the McGill Community for Lifelong Learning, made up of senior citizens with a thirst for knowledge, that I was asked about Senior Secrets.

Every few days, the YouTube channel with 321,000 subscribers posts a new video with “science-backed health tips, surprising remedies, and powerful longevity secrets that most people over 60 have never been told.” The channel’s icon is a cartoonish grandpa with a finger on his smiling lips, swearing you to secrecy, and the thumbnails advertising each video are emblazoned with red and yellow banners, like crime scene tape. “Goodbye old age!” screams the latest. “Never take this after 65!”; “Just 1 cup before bed repairs your eyes overnight”; “99% of seniors don’t know: huge mistake.” One of the channel’s trademarks is opening a video title with “Over 60?”.

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I picked four such channels and checked every scientific reference their most popular videos listed to see if they existed. Out of 65 references, five were real. I was unable to find the 60 others. As with the Copenhagen non-study, the journals, volumes, and issues were usually dead-on: the AI is simply inserting fake papers into real pages. Occasionally, a journal was made up. Often, the only authors listed were departments or institutes (like “Mayo Clinic Center for Aging” or “British Columbia University Exercise Science Department”), which is highly unusual and should serve as a red flag. People write papers, not departments.

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What we are witnessing with channels like Senior Secrets is the work of content farms, likely based in Vietnam. Sitting in front of dozens of computers are people with no formal training in science or medicine who write prompts for generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini. The AI creates scripts, animations, thumbnails, voiceover narration, fake scientific papers; and these made-up elements are mashed together in a video that gets uploaded to YouTube.

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Much, much more at the link. All of it horrifying.