> After letting them run rampant for a couple of years, it looks like YouTube is finally cracking down on these slop factories. Deadline reports that YouTube has suspended a total of four separate channels dedicated to AI-generated trailers for fake movies (or real, upcoming movies that don’t have trailers yet). Two were suspended back in March, and their alternate channels have now been smacked with the same banhammer.
> The channels, allegedly created by just two individual users, are not actually removed from the platform. But they cannot monetize their videos, and are presumably suffering some pretty big losses in search visibility as well. Combined, the initial two channels had more than two million subscribers.
> Deadline doesn’t have specific statements from YouTube on what policies the channels violated, but speculates that YouTube finally decided to enforce its misinformation policy, basic original material policies that mirror US copyright and fair use rules, and guidelines that deter uploaders from creating videos with the “sole purpose of getting views.”
There's a lot of conjecture here, but banning four channels doesn't seem like a massive crackdown that proves that YouTube hates AI movie trailers.
> A Deadline report in March brought broader attention to the AI trailer problem, highlighting that some Hollywood studios have chosen to use YouTube’s content flagging system to simply claim the ad revenue from the fake trailer rather than getting them removed. After all, if someone else is doing all the “work” and getting paid, why try to protect your intellectual property and artistic integrity, when you can just grab the money instead? Turning off the monetization faucet for these channels might get the studios to finally enforce their own copyright, now that the money well is gone.
In fact, this paragraph would suggest that they're still quite happily making money from these things.
pavel_lishin•2h ago
> The channels, allegedly created by just two individual users, are not actually removed from the platform. But they cannot monetize their videos, and are presumably suffering some pretty big losses in search visibility as well. Combined, the initial two channels had more than two million subscribers.
> Deadline doesn’t have specific statements from YouTube on what policies the channels violated, but speculates that YouTube finally decided to enforce its misinformation policy, basic original material policies that mirror US copyright and fair use rules, and guidelines that deter uploaders from creating videos with the “sole purpose of getting views.”
There's a lot of conjecture here, but banning four channels doesn't seem like a massive crackdown that proves that YouTube hates AI movie trailers.
> A Deadline report in March brought broader attention to the AI trailer problem, highlighting that some Hollywood studios have chosen to use YouTube’s content flagging system to simply claim the ad revenue from the fake trailer rather than getting them removed. After all, if someone else is doing all the “work” and getting paid, why try to protect your intellectual property and artistic integrity, when you can just grab the money instead? Turning off the monetization faucet for these channels might get the studios to finally enforce their own copyright, now that the money well is gone.
In fact, this paragraph would suggest that they're still quite happily making money from these things.