"Hair-raising." YouTube videos on Belarusian history, written from start to finish by artificial intelligence, have appeared.

First and foremost, were there even people involved? Both the covers and the voiceover in these videos are products of Artificial Intelligence. But the saddest part is that the scripts, with almost all their 'facts', are too. When you listen, you feel that the scripts were written by ChatGPT. The same cadence, emptiness in the words, and facts utterly pulled out of thin air.

Without a human, AI is nothing, and for Belarusian culture, even more so.

Let's analyze the video about Uladzimir Karatkevich. The video begins with the sentence: "On November 25, 1984, a man whose name was known throughout the country died in a Minsk hospital." Karatkevich died on July 25. In the video about Baradulin, for example, they invented a non-existent village where he supposedly was born. But the trouble is, these are the most harmless 'errors'.

Someone might say, don't give them publicity. The nuance is that some of these videos have thousands and even tens of thousands of views.

Let's return to the video about Karatkevich. It mentions some "273 pages from the KGB dossier" on the classic writer. Hello, when did the KGB open its archives? A supposed KGB note from April 1984 is quoted, recommending increased surveillance on Karatkevich, and the entire narrative of the video leads to the idea that people from the security services helped Karatkevich die. Later, it talks about Karatkevich's alleged words in June, regarding the KGB's plans: "They are waiting for a convenient moment." And in the next sentence of the video, it talks about that supposedly convenient moment in autumn, when Karatkevich was writing another novel, "Christ Has Landed in Grodno".

But the problem is that by the autumn of 1984, Karatkevich had already been dead for several months. And secondly, he wrote the famous novel almost 20 years before his death.

Then a chilling scene is mentioned with KGB agents coming to Karatkevich's apartment, intimidating him so he wouldn't write the novel, and "the writer's wife Alla Ivanovna…" It doesn't even matter what she was doing, because Karatkevich's wife was named Valiantsina Branislavavna.

According to the video's authors, a day before his death, two plainclothes men intimidated the writer in his ward, and in the morning he was found dead. And allegedly, a hospital doctor recounted all of this. Every sentence is a sensation piled on another sensation. Then again, that "Christ Has Landed…" was his last novel, published in a meager edition of 5,000 copies, officially due to a supposed paper shortage. This, of course, is complete nonsense.

Let's listen further. Hair-raising. About some "round-up" of the intelligentsia in Minsk in 1984, about arrests and disappearances of national figures. At the phrase "Poet Vasil Bykaŭ, Karatkevich's friend, received a warning from the authorities," I burst out laughing.

Then it gets completely wild. Testimonies from some people about a police officer giving Karatkevich an injection with something unknown, while his wife Larysa Henadzeŭna… it doesn't matter what she was doing, a few minutes earlier the authors called her Ala Ivanavna, although in reality her name was Valiantsina Branislavavna. Then it talks about Karatkevich's last unfinished book 'Leaves and Roots'. I even Googled it out of curiosity. 'Roots / Leaves' is a collection of decolonial texts written by women, trans, and non-binary people from Belarus. Further, a toast to Karatkevich's death in Moscow is quoted, along with entries from a killer's diary.

They also voiced Karatkevich's last words to his widow Larysa Henadzeŭna, who was earlier called Ala Ivanavna in the same video, but whose real name was Valiantsina Branislavavna. It doesn't matter what Karatkevich might have said to her as he was dying, because the classic writer's wife died a year and a half before him.

Only after I watched the video did I read in the description: "The video offers interpretations and encourages the viewer to study history more deeply."

Perhaps the authors have the best intentions, but if my words reach them, I passionately urge them to cease this harmful activity of spreading ignorance. Commentators under the videos take these 'sensations' at face value.

Our history and our heroes are so interesting, bright, dramatic, good, evil, weak, and strong that there is no need to invent alternative biographies for them.

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