by Google
YouTube comes with a new product that stirs the waters of creativity. With the promise of greater transparency and truthfulness of content, YouTube introduces a new tool for flagging material generated with the help of artificial intelligence. Creators are required to clearly label such content. How will all this affect the digital world and creativity?
Today is a big day for YouTube as it introduces a brand new feature that opens the door to the future of video creation. This new feature will allow creators to mark if their videos contain material created by artificial intelligence or are synthetic.
While uploading and publishing a video, creators will see a small checkbox. They will have to report if their video contains "edited or synthetic" content that looks genuine. These are situations where it may seem to us that someone said or did something, but in fact they did not. Furthermore, it can be editing footage that depicts real events and locations or presents a "realistic looking scene" that also never happened. YouTube gives examples like showing a fake tornado heading towards a real city or using a deepfake voice to make it seem like a real person is commenting on a video.
However, creators will not have to flag content that is clearly unrealistic, such as filters, background blur special effects, or animation that doesn't even attempt to look realistic.
In November, YouTube detailed its AI-generated content policy (click to our blog), creating two levels of rules: strict rules to protect music publishers and artists and looser guidelines for everyone else. Deepfake music, such as Drake singing Ice Spice songs or rapping a song written by someone else, can be removed at the request of the artist's label if they don't like it.
Under these rules creators will be required to tag AI-generated material, but how they should do this has yet to be determined. And if you're an ordinary person who's been deepfaked on YouTube, it can be a lot more complicated to get it removed — you'd have to fill out a private complaint form that the company will review. Today, YouTube didn't say much about the process, other than to note that it is "continuing to work on updating its privacy process."
Like other platforms that have already implemented flagging of AI-generated content, YouTube is relying to a system based on the honesty of creators. This means creators need to be honest and flag if their videos contain artificially generated material. YouTube spokesman Jack Malon previously told The Verge that YouTube is "investing in tools" to recognize AI-generated content. However, it is known that the AI detection software is not exactly the most accurate. YouTube's ">blog says that they could add an AI notification to videos even if the creator didn't do it himself. This could happen "especially if the content generated has the potential to confuse or mislead people." Videos that touch on sensitive topics such as health, elections, and finance will see even stronger labels appear directly in the video, similar to when the video contains paid collaboration.
Creators who do not take the new rule to heart and flag synthetic content as they should may run into punishments. These include deleting their videos or temporarily suspending them from the YouTube Partner Program, which allows creators to earn money.
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