YouTube Now Automatically Applies More Visible Labels on AI-Generated Videos

Earlier this year, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said that he wanted to reduce the amount of “AI slop” on the platform. While this still looks like a herculean task, the YouTube team just announced some changes to make AI-generated videos easier to identify.

First of all, YouTube now uses AI detection tools to automatically apply a label on AI-generated videos. The platform is also making these labels for AI-generated content more visible on long-form content and Shorts videos.

As of today, Google requires content creators to manually disclose whether they used AI or not when they upload a video on the platform. While Google is sticking with these manual AI usage disclosures, the company now uses AI detection tools to automatically label AI-generated content. Videos created with Google’s own AI tools, like Veo or Dream Screen, will also always appear with an AI label.

“If a creator doesn’t specify whether or not they used AI, but our systems detect significant photorealistic AI use, we will now automatically apply a label,” the YouTube team explained. “If a creator thinks their content was incorrectly identified as AI-generated, they can update the disclosure status in YouTube Studio.”

Google is also making its AI labels for YouTube videos more visible. On long-form videos, the label now appears right below the video player, above the video description. For Shorts vertical videos, however, the AI label appears as a persistent overlay.

“We’ve heard consistently from our community that they value transparency when it comes to generative AI content,” the YouTube team said today. Unfortunately, YouTube can’t reasonably expect all content creators to disclose that they used AI to create their videos. That’s why automatically labeling AI-generated video seems like the right thing to do, even though YouTube’s AI detection tools are likely going to make some mistakes.