In the ancient and possibly cursed days of April 2023, a frightful artificial intelligence creation was unleashed upon the world. It’s “Pepperoni Hug Spot,” and it’s an entirely AI-generated ad for a fake pizza parlor. From the jerky movements and unnatural facial expressions of the AI people to the outlandish jargon and monotone creepiness of the voiceover, just about everything in the clip screams Uncanny Valley. Now, a remake of “Pepperoni Hug Spot” has emerged, and it somehow manages to be even creepier than the original — because it looks frighteningly realistic.

The above clip compares content creator Pizza Later’s original “Pepperoni Hug Spot” clip that was generated with the Runway Gen-2 AI video generation tool to a 2024 version they made with Runway Gen-3, and the difference is staggering. While there’s still some occasional visual weirdness in the newer version — misshapen hands, oversized knives, strangely shaped pizza — the human characters look far more natural and realistic. Even the new voiceover sounds perfectly passable.  

This dramatic development from an utterly unconvincing, meme-worthily clumsy creation to a surprisingly realistic clip that’s a few touches short of being ready to run between professionally-made ads shows the huge progress AI tools have made in just over a year. It’s eerie to think how convincing “Pepperoni Hug Spot” might end up looking in another year or two. 

The original “Pepperoni Hug Spot” was a viral piece of content, to the point that Pizza Hut Canada actually briefly converted a Toronto location to a Pepperoni Hug Spot. However, the 2024 update is a far more somber piece of media that highlights how convincing AI-created videos have become — and serves as a reminder that the lightning-fast development of AI tools is unlikely to end here. 

Such signs are all around us these days. Big changes are coming to movies and TV because of AI, and the industry is in a state of turmoil as it tries to determine and prepare for its effects. Even AI tools that are available to just about anyone can produce impressive and often unnervingly realistic content, from revealing what “Toy Story” could look like in real life to imagining Marvel’s Avengers as directed by Wes Anderson. Combine all this with AI’s increasing ability to create human characters, like the unsettlingly real-looking woman talking in a microphone from TikTok content creator @mahiwagangkuneho, and it’s entirely possible that the creepy 2023 “Pepperoni Hug Spot” will one day be remembered as the good old days when AI was still clearly recognizable as AI.