In the late 1980s, Milli Vanilli were global superstars - two flamboyant performers with big hair, even bigger shoulder pads, and a string of chart-topping hits including Girl, You Know It’s True.
But in 1990, their career collapsed almost overnight. During a live performance on MTV, the track skipped, revealing they had been lip syncing - and worse, that they hadn’t sung a single note on their own album.
The revelation was a media scandal. Grammys were revoked. Fans felt duped. It wasn’t just that the music was fake - it was the illusion of authenticity that broke the spell.
More than three decades later, that same unease is resurfacing - only now it’s not pop stars we’re questioning, it’s AI.
This week, entrepreneur Mark Cuban cited the Milli Vanilli moment in a bold prediction about the future of artificial content:
It sounds counterintuitive - but when you see where AI video is headed, it starts to make sense.
When AI Starts Talking Back
Google just released Veo 3, its most advanced generative video model to date. The big headline? For the first time, these videos come with native audio. Dialogue. Ambient sound. Emotion.
Until now, AI-generated video often looked impressive but felt sterile. Without synced voices or soundscapes, it was hard to take seriously as narrative content. But Veo 3 changes that. The addition of voice - in sync with lip movement - pushes the illusion to the next level.
It’s no wonder Cuban sees a trust crisis looming.
Trust, Lip Sync, and the New Authenticity Crisis
We’re visual creatures. When lips move believably and voices sound human, we trust what we’re seeing - even if, deep down, we know it’s synthetic.
This is the new battleground for believability: not just visual realism, but performative realism. With Veo 3, Synthesia, HeyGen, and others charging ahead, we’re entering an era where AI-generated characters can talk, emote, and deceive - seamlessly.
Which brings us back to Milli Vanilli. The outrage wasn’t just about lip syncing - it was about being tricked. And Cuban’s point is that when everything starts to feel like a trick, we’ll go looking for the one thing that still feels solid: each other.
Deepfakes have terrified pundits and policymakers for years - but their real-world impact has been surprisingly muted so far.
Yes, there have been a few alarming moments:
A fake Zelenskyy surrender video during the Ukraine war (quickly debunked).
A Biden robocall during the 2024 primaries urging voters to stay home.
AI-generated campaign content in India, mostly used for satire or multilingual outreach.
But large-scale disinformation campaigns using deepfakes? Not quite the dystopia we feared - yet.
Still, with tools like Veo 3 unlocking photorealistic speech and lip sync, the potential for misuse is becoming harder to ignore.
Cuban’s paradox: AI might make us more human
Mark Cuban’s comment seemingly raises an interesting, somewhat counter-intuitive question: Could AI’s rise trigger a renaissance in presence?
As artificial content becomes indistinguishable from the real thing, the desire for something undeniably human may only grow stronger. And we’re already seeing signs:
The rise of “dumb phones” among Gen Z, marketed as detox tools in a world of algorithmic noise.
A spike in live event attendance - from music and stand-up to political town halls - as people seek unscripted, uneditable moments.
Brands that could automate everything choosing instead to invest in human spokespeople, ambassadors, and in-store experiences.
In a strange twist, the more flawless our fakes become, the more we crave imperfection. Grainy audio. Awkward pauses. Eye contact that isn’t triangulated through a webcam.
This may be Cuban’s real point: not just that we’ll mistrust synthetic content, but that we’ll hunger for human nuance. The messy, improvised stuff that AI - for all its fluency - still can’t quite fake.
And it’s not just in our personal lives. Cuban’s prediction carries weight in the workplace too.
If AI avatars can deliver a pitch, lead a webinar, or host a customer service call, then what makes you valuable? Increasingly, it’s the moments when only a real person will do - the handshake, the eye contact, the unscripted interaction.
Already, we’re seeing salespeople choosing in-person meetings for high-stakes deals, therapists and coaches noting demand for face-to-face sessions over virtual ones, and remote-first teams investing in offsites and real-world bonding to cut through the digital fatigue.
In a world where everything can be faked, being there might just become a competitive edge.
So What’s Next?
As video gen crosses into new territory, we’re not just watching the birth of AI filmmaking - we’re entering an age where performance and truth are increasingly hard to separate.
Maybe Cuban’s right. Perhaps we’ll lean harder into meet ups, handshakes, and physical presence - not just to feel something real, but to prove that we are.
