YouTube Is Making It Easier to Discover Videos Created With Artificial Intelligence.
Back in January , YouTube surprised me by announcing its intentions to combat “low-quality AI-generated content.” These aren’t my words: the company directly condemned the use of such content on its platform and declared its mission to reduce the “proliferation of low-quality, repetitive content” on YouTube. In an era where social media engagement is valued above all else, YouTube’s fight against a “genre” that drives massive amounts of traffic (and spreads misinformation) is crucial.
This isn’t necessarily a new initiative for the company. YouTube has been labeling videos created or processed by AI since 2024 , though with one significant condition: creators had to disclose their use of AI when uploading them. Thus, it was possible to publish an AI-generated video on the platform without disclosing it to YouTube. The platform then showed this video to thousands or even millions of viewers, many of whom might never have realized the video was in fact fake . Fortunately, this appears to be changing.
New AI tags on YouTube
On Wednesday, YouTube announced a new AI-powered labeling system that impacts both viewers and content creators. First, there’s the labels themselves. YouTube says it’s making these AI-powered labels much more visible, whether you’re watching a video in the app or on the YouTube website. For long-form videos (otherwise known as traditional YouTube videos), you’ll see the label below the video player, above the description. For short videos, it’s even more obvious: YouTube will add the label above the video itself, making it unmissable.
However, in any video you watch, these markings are quite obvious, and that’s great. AI-generated videos are becoming increasingly realistic , putting viewers at greater risk of being exposed to misinformation. Sure, some AI-generated videos are obvious (at least to most), but others appear photorealistic. Without these clear AI markings, many viewers might believe something that simply isn’t true. This could be as harmless as an AI-generated bunny jumping on a trampoline, or as dangerous as a politician “confessing” to crimes they didn’t actually commit.
YouTube is also rolling out a new AI-powered discovery feature.
None of this matters, of course, if YouTube doesn’t know the video in question was created using AI. If the company still operates on a trust-based foundation, then labels will only be as useful as the content creators’ honesty. At least, that’s how it used to be. YouTube is further expanding its AI disclosure requirements with an automated AI detection system.
Starting this month, if YouTube’s system detects the use of AI in a video, it will automatically assign it a new “AI” label, even if the video’s creator hasn’t explicitly disclosed its use. This is bad news for potential disinformation campaigners: theoretically, you can no longer surreptitiously upload a hyper-realistic AI-powered video to YouTube and pass it off as legitimate—assuming YouTube’s AI detection software is actually working correctly.
This leads to an immediate flaw in the system: false positives. AI-based detectors don’t have the reputation many believe , and even when they work well, they are prone to error. Of course, you don’t want people spreading AI-powered videos like wildfire on YouTube, but you also don’t want to penalize creators whose videos are mistakenly flagged by bots as containing fakes.
YouTube claims creators have some control over the situation. The company encourages creators who believe their videos were incorrectly flagged as containing inappropriate content to update their disclosure status in YouTube Studio. However, this feature is in early development, so it’s unclear how simple this process actually is.