YouTube has laid out its vision for the coming year, and it involves putting the reins on "AI slop." In his annual letter, CEO Neal Mohan says cutting down on low-grade AI-generated videos and spotting deepfakes will be top priorities for the Google-owned platform in 2026. "It's becoming harder to detect what's real and what's AI-generated," he writes, calling deepfakes a "particularly critical" problem.
Mohan points out that "over the past 20 years, we've learned not to impose any preconceived notions on the creator ecosystem. Today, once-odd trends like ASMR and watching other people play video games are mainstream hits. But with this openness comes a responsibility to maintain the high quality viewing experience that people want." As such, Mohan writes that YouTube is ramping up systems originally built to fight spam and clickbait to filter repetitive, poor-quality AI content and remove "harmful synthetic media" that break platform rules, reports CNBC. The site already labels AI-created videos and requires creators to disclose the use of it.
Despite the crackdown, YouTube isn't backing away from AI; it's trying to channel it. More than 1 million channels used YouTube's AI creation tools daily in December, Mohan says, and this year the company plans to let users "create a Short using your own likeness, produce games with a simple text prompt, and experiment with music. Throughout this evolution, AI will remain a tool for expression, not a replacement." Read the letter in full here.
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