YouTube used artificial intelligence to adapt the ‘shorts’ of certain creators without their authorization. Several video authors have reported it, and YouTube confirmed it.
It seems that YouTube secretly applies AI filters to certain videos for several months already. It is a question of so-called ‘visual’ improvements made to brief videos, which have been noticed by several creators. In practice, people’s hair appears somewhat different, their skin is more vague or clearer in places, and the folds of their clothes are more marked. In short, it sounds a little false.
‘It looks like a Deepfake video, but that is not the case,’ explains the Youtubeur Rhett Shull. The latter usually performs guitar test videos, but he looked at this subject after having noticed a difference between his videos published on Instagram and on YouTube.
The first complaints concerning these changes surfaced a few months ago. YouTube reacted to controversy. ‘We are carrying out an experience on a small number of YouTube Shorts. We actually use traditional machine learning techniques to improve the clarity and sharpness of videos during processing ‘, specifies Rene Ritchie, in charge of contacts with video creators for YouTube, in a message published on the social network X.
Filters and AI
In itself, this type of treatment is not new. Videos and photos on social networks are often suitable during treatment. Think of lighting adjustments or background noise filtering. With this difference that this generally happens with consent and knowledge of creators.
This ‘test’ also raises questions about the limits of the treatment carried out by a platform before a download. ‘If I had wanted such awful clarity for my images, I would have done it myself,’ explains Shull in his video. ‘But the worst part is that it seems to have been generated by AI. It goes completely against me and what I want to do on the internet. This could even erode public confidence towards me. ‘
At a time when social networks are flooded with poor quality content generated by AI and vehement denounced, many video creators are proud of their authenticity. It is important for them to appear ‘real’. They therefore often make conscious choices in terms of lighting and processing their videos for this purpose. The idea that YouTube makes adjustments without authorization so that everything appears more or less identical, is therefore worrying, especially since such an intervention makes the distinction between AI and reality even more difficult.