Thread 106387173

Goytube secretly used AI cucks to edit people's videos.

Looks like they did it.

Rick Beato's face just didn't look right. "I was like 'man, my hair looks strange', he says. "And the closer I looked it almost seemed like I was wearing makeup." Beato runs a YouTube channel with over five million subscribers, where he's made nearly 2,000 videos exploring the world of music. Something seemed off in one of his recent posts, but he could barely tell the difference. "I thought, 'am just I imagining things?'"
It turns out, he wasn't. In recent months, YouTube has secretly used artificial intelligence (AI) to tweak people's videos without letting them know or asking permission. Wrinkles in shirts seem more defined. Skin is sharper in some places and smoother in others. Pay close attention to ears, and you may notice them warp. These changes are small, barely visible without a side-by-side comparison. Yet some disturbed YouTubers say it gives their content a subtle and unwelcome AI-generated feeling.
There's a larger trend at play. A growing share of reality is pre-processed by AI before it reaches us. Eventually, the question won't be whether you can tell the difference, but whether it's eroding our ties to the world around us.
"The more I looked at it, the more upset I got," says Rhett Shull, another popular music YouTuber. Shull, a friend of Beato's, started looking into his own posts and spotted the same strange artefacts. He posted a video on the subject that's racked up over 500,000 views. "If I wanted this terrible over-sharpening I would have done it myself. But the bigger thing is it looks AI-generated. I think that deeply misrepresents me and what I do and my voice on the internet. It could potentially erode the trust I have with my audience in a small way. It just bothers me."

>>106387319
Shull and Beato weren't the first to notice the problem. Complaints on social media date back to June, at least, with users posting closeups of odd-looking body parts and questioning YouTube's intentions. Now, after months of rumors in comment sections, the company has finally confirmed it is altering a limited number of videos on YouTube Shorts, the app's short-form video feature.
"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)," said Rene Ritchie, YouTube's head of editorial and creator liaison, in a post on X. "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 about whether users will be given a choice about AI tweaking their videos.
It's certainly true that modern smartphones come with built-in AI features that can enhance image and video quality. But that's an entirely different affair, according to Samuel Woolley, the Dietrich chair of disinformation studies at the University of Pittsburgh in the US. "You can make decisions about what you want your phone to do, and whether to turn on certain features. What we have here is a company manipulating content from leading users that is then being distributed to a public audience without the consent of the people who produce the videos."

Woolley argues YouTube's choice of words feels like a misdirection. "I think using the term 'machine learning' is an attempt to obscure the fact that they used AI because of concerns surrounding the technology. Machine learning is in fact a subfield of artificial intelligence," he says.
Ritchie shared additional details in a follow-up post, drawing a line between "traditional machine-learning" and generative AI – where an algorithm creates entirely new content by learning patterns in vast datasets. Woolley, however, says this isn't a meaningful distinction here.
Regardless, the move is indicative of how AI continues to add additional steps between us and the information and media we consume, often in ways you'd never notice at first glance.
"Footsteps in the sand are a great analogy," says Jill Walker Rettberg, a professor at the Center for Digital Narrative at the University of Bergen in Norway. "You know someone made those footprints. With an analogue camera, you know something was in front of the camera because the film was exposed to light. But with algorithms and AI, what does this do to our relationship with reality?"
In March 2025, controversy erupted over an apparent AI remaster of '80s sitcoms The Cosby Show and A Different World streaming on Netflix. The shows are available in high-definition, despite the fact they were originally shot on video tape. The Verge called the results a "nightmarish mess of distorted faces, garbled text and misshapen backgrounds".

>>106387173 (OP)
did this guy ever show his original video or is it just him complaining that it looks fake with no comparison again

>>106387173 (OP)
Wtf but I thought AI was based, right winger and trad.

>>106387340
hitler wouldn't support AI art

How Google trained you to stop clicking

It is clearly something on the minds of engineers at Google, which owns YouTube. Alongside the generative AI capabilities baked into the camera on the Pixel 10, it is also the first phone to implement new content credentials set by the industry in the camera. These place a digital watermark on images to allow people to identify if they were edited using AI.
But Woolley says the use of machine learning to edit YouTube videos without users' knowledge risks blurring the lines of what people can trust online.
"This case with YouTube reveals the ways in which AI is increasingly a medium that defines our lives and realities," Woolley says. "People are already distrustful of content that they encounter on social media. What happens if people know that companies are editing content from the top down, without even telling the content creators themselves?"
Still, some aren't bothered by YouTube's foray into AI-modified content. "You know, YouTube is constantly working on new tools and experimenting with stuff," Beato says. "They're a best-in-class company, I've got nothing but good things to say. YouTube changed my life."

>>106387346
B-but ai art was supposed to be aryan. Those heckin troon artists were supposed to be dead by now.
I thought corpos would let us use our generated AI hitler miku for their publicity.

>>106387339
I haven't seen the video in question, but I've seen many of his music videos, and he's probably in the top 5 whiniest bitches on YouTube.
Just something to keep in mind for context here.

>>106387375
the video is just like 10 minutes of him talking about how his video looks on youtube shorts but never actually showing the original

>>106387386
Did your swiss cheese brain space out before you reached the part of the text where it talked about a bunch of other creators complaining about the same thing and then a Youtube spokesman actually fucking confirming that they did it? Try actually reading things before offering your retarded conspiracy theory hot take, moron.

Isn't that copyright infringement?

>>106387401
>word words words
don't care
show me the fucking videos so we can actually compare and see what they're doing

>>106387173 (OP)
the BBC is writing click bait headlines now? Shameful

>>106387340
It is.

>>106387346
makes sense, since he was an artist.

>>106387173 (OP)
>aaah, YouTube is using le hekin AI to edit my hekin slop shorts
>look inside
>it's just shitty compression they then try to correct with a softening and edge sharpening filter
AI derangement syndrome is real

Are we really surprised that this is happening?

>>106387764
it's true, though
yiff in hell

>>106387777
Checked and notsurprised-pilled

>>106387764
You shouldn't need denoising on YouTube videos anyway, the bitrate is so appalling. Film stock demos on YouTube are a joke.

>>106387173 (OP)
it turned someone into a nigger?

>>106387339
It's for jewtube shorts and shorts target audience doesn't know what a why-tee dlp is

>>106389013
lol.

>>106387335
>Machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence
That is nonsense. Artificial intelligence is a subfield of machine learning. Not all machine learning is AI, but all AI is a based on machine learning

>>106389444
There are many types of artificial intelligence that are purely algorithmic and not based on machine learning.

>>106387173 (OP)
What's even the point of doing this?
Is this some kind of 13,000-layer deep way of saving storage space? Like they're deliberately only saving 180p videos and AI upscaling everything?

>>106387605
If you upload your video to youtube its their video now not yours

>>106387319
Rhett Shill got upset? Oh noes I'm scawed!

>>106389480
All machine learning is purely algorithmic. Linear regression for example.

>>106389739
You know what I mean.

>>106387173 (OP)
>you have The Ministry of Truth but instead of people doing it you have AI slop falsify/modify the past and the present

>>106389831
There exists no type of artificial intelligence that is not based on machine learning. Unless you're talking about 1980s game AI like the goombas in Mario that goes back and forth on a line. In modern language artificial intelligence implies machine learning. Not all machine learning is AI, but all AI is machine learning.

>>106389878
>In modern language
In other words, "in the way people mistakenly say it".

>Unless you're talking about 1980s game AI like the goombas in Mario that goes back and forth on a line
That's an example of an extremely rudimentary AI that's not based on machine learning.
See? You agree with me.

>>106387605
maybe?

>>106387689
Wow, aliterally who generated a heckin based trad antibrown art. We won, AIsisters.