YouTube has become an unexpected ally against AI, and no one saw that coming

All companies, absolutely all of them, around the world, are “focusing on AI“. It doesn’t even matter if AI is going to do any good, it’s just about “not being left behind”. And the result, while we wait for all companies to raise prices and it becomes absurd to maintain services, is anything but futuristic. It is, as many of us expected, the shoddiest version of the future that cinema promised us for years, with robots tasked with being our psychologists and consulting what we used to look up on Google.

Well, AI is fine

The big tech companies, which have spent an absolute fortune to keep up, are now announcing that from now on AI will be the center of all their hopes. All except one, which has realized that with this trend it will soon become absolutely useless: YouTube. Yes, to avoid misinformation, it will now require that videos made by artificial intelligence be highlighted. I didn’t see this coming, especially considering the initial turn it took, rowing completely in its favor.

In fact, even if you as a “creator” decide not to label it, YouTube will do it for you, detecting it if it has a significant use of photorealistic AI. “We have continuously heard from our community that they value transparency regarding AI content. These changes have been designed to balance transparency with creative control.”

And what are they going to do with the AI-generated videos so that you know they are? Well, YouTube itself responds: “The goal is to find the context immediately. If it looks real but is made with AI, viewers will know right away.” In other words: there will be a notice at the beginning of the video and not, as until now, in the long description. Note that this will not affect recommendations… nor earning money from what a machine has created. Step by step.