It looked like a lot of fun and fun on the local Facebook page.
But something seemed off about the clip.
I’m a reporter, so I’m a skeptic by nature. My eyes were drawn to the mysterious nature of what I was seeing. Did the jerky movements of the people on the unicycles look like humans or robots? Did the oddly shaped shovel held by one of them look like there was something wrong with them?
Come to think of it, isn’t that scene of a clown and his family shoveling snow on a unicycle not something you would expect to input into an AI generator as a prompt?
You can’t be too careful these days. Tools like OpenAI’s Sora have become incredibly fast and amazingly good. They create videos that look very real.
Fake clips of rabbits jumping on trampolines meant to go viral because they’re cute, and fake conversations about food stamps meant to stir up anger, have spread far and wide on social media, fooling even those who thought they were immune to AI’s machinations.
At a time when video evidence is central to how the public interprets the most dangerous news events, what is true and what is not is critical.
Now, about the video purporting to show a snow shovel unicycle rider.
I asked my fellow reporters at the Boston Globe. Some wondered whether the feats they were watching were real or computer-generated. Some were convinced that it had all the hallmarks of a fake.
One publicly available AI detection tool called AI or Not was of little use. The company was asked to analyze the video and concluded there was a 51% chance it was artificially created. Toss a coin.
When contacted via Facebook, the person who posted the video claimed it was real.
“There is no AI,” the poster, who identified himself as Somerville resident Alex Feldman, wrote in a message. “We really did this.”
He seemed sincere enough, but trolls operate in mysterious ways and with mysterious purposes.
The only thing left was to see the supposed act in person. AI has come a long way, but it can’t (yet) create a unicycle that actually shovels snow.
So Mr. Feldman agreed to meet with reporters at his Somerville home on Tuesday to set it apart from the robots once and for all.
He emerged from his home near Powderhouse Square wearing the same clown hat he wore in the Facebook video and holding a unicycle in his hand. That’s a good start.
He hopped on his lime green unicycle, found his balance while steadying himself with a shovel, and set off.
He maneuvered the car up and down driveways and back and forth on sidewalks with speed and dexterity that seemed unnatural, as effortless as he could, given the slick roads and slushy mounds everywhere.
he was Too Some might say that’s fine. Like how a computer would describe human capabilities when only computers understood them.
There was no doubt in my mind when he could easily recreate the unicycle snow shoveling routine in real life. Feldman’s skills were not generated by AI.
He comes to them the old-fashioned way.
“There are some more efficient ways to shovel snow from your driveway,” he joked, “but there are also a lot of less efficient methods, like a pogo stick. I don’t recommend that.”
Feldman has a long history with unicycling, which he said was his “gateway drug” to the performing arts. He currently works professionally under the stage name Alex the Jester, and is a comical and sought-after expert in techniques such as juggling, balancing delicate objects, and playing two flutes.
You may have seen him at the King Richard’s Fair many years ago. That was his starting point. In a few weeks, you’ll see him at the comedy revue he’s organizing at the Comedy Club in Harvard Square.
He is also known in his Somerville neighborhood for using his unicycle to do everyday chores, such as buying necessities at stores down the street. Partly for a laugh, he argues that unicycles can be more convenient than traveling by bicycle because they are light and easy to carry.
He shares his passion with his family. The other two people in the Facebook video brandishing shovels and riding unicycles are his sons.
This means you shouldn’t necessarily trust what you see in videos posted online. But if you happen to see a video on Facebook of a hilarious Somerville dad doing improbable chores on a unicycle, pogo stick, or other vehicle more suited to a circus than a driveway, there’s a good chance it’s real.
Spencer Buell can be reached at spencer.buell@globe.com. follow him @SpencerBuell.
