YouTube has been quietly using AI to alter people’s videos without telling them or asking for permission.
According to a report by the BBC, YouTube has secretly used AI to edit people’s videos in recent months. The changes are reportedly small and often hard to spot without a side-by-side comparison.
Wrinkles in clothes appear sharper, skin can look smoother or more textured, and ears sometimes warp. Some creators say these edits give their work an artificial look they never intended.
Several YouTubers noticed the differences and raised concerns online. In one video with over 600,000 views, content creator Rhett Shull showed that the same video looked different on YouTube compared with Instagram. He says the YouTube Shorts version appeared “smoothened” and had “an oil painting effect” on his face.
“I did not consent to this,” Shull says. “The most important thing I have as a YouTube creator is that you trust what I’m making, what I’m saying, and what I’m doing is truly me. Replacing or enhancing my work with some AI upscaling system not only erodes that trust with the audience, but it also erodes my trust in YouTube.”
Shull is not alone, according to the report. A Reddit post from June 27 entitled “YouTube Shorts are almost certainly being AI upscaled” shows screenshots of the same video at different resolutions to claim that details were being added or removed by AI. Other social media complaints by YouTube revealed how their videos were being automatically edited with AI.
After months of speculation, YouTube has now confirmed that it is altering a limited number of videos on its Shorts platform.
“We’re running an experiment on select YouTube Shorts that uses traditional machine learning technology to unblur, denoise and improve clarity in videos during processing (similar to what a modern smartphone does when you record a video),” Rene Ritchie, YouTube’s head of editorial and creator liaison, writes a post on X last week. “YouTube is always working on ways to provide the best video quality and experience possible, and will continue to take creator and viewer feedback into consideration as we iterate and improve on these features.”
YouTube did not respond to the BBC’s questions on whether creators will have the option to disable the edits. However, the news outlet pointed out that altering videos without informing users could undermine trust in what people see online.
It comes months after reports that Google is using its expansive library of YouTube videos to train its AI models like Gemini and Veo 3, shocking many content creators.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
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