Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Youtube AI Media

YouTube Can't Put Pandora's AI Slop Back in the Box (gizmodo.com) 74

Posted by BeauHD from the enough-is-enough dept.
Longtime Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from Gizmodo: YouTube is inundated with AI-generated slop, and that's not going to change anytime soon. Instead of cutting down on the total number of slop channels, the platform is planning to update its policies to cut out some of the worst offenders making money off "spam." At the same time, it's still full steam ahead adding tools to make sure your feeds are full of mass-produced brainrot.

In an update to its support page posted last week, YouTube said it will modify guidelines for its Partner Program, which lets some creators with enough views make money off their videos. The video platform said it requires YouTubers to create "original" and "authentic" content, but now it will "better identify mass-produced and repetitious content." The changes will take place on July 15. The company didn't advertise whether this change is related to AI, but the timing can't be overlooked considering how more people are noticing the rampant proliferation of slop content flowing onto the platform every day.

The AI "revolution" has resulted in a landslide of trash content that has mired most creative platforms. Alphabet-owned YouTube has been especially bad recently, with multiple channels dedicated exclusively to pumping out legions of fake and often misleading videos into the sludge-filled sewer that has become users' YouTube feeds. AI slop has become so prolific it has infected most social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Last month, John Oliver on "Last Week Tonight" specifically highlighted several YouTube channels that crafted obviously fake stories made to show White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in a good light. These channels and similar accounts across social media pump out these quick AI-generated videos to make a quick buck off YouTube's Partner Program.

YouTube Can't Put Pandora's AI Slop Back in the Box More | Reply

YouTube Can't Put Pandora's AI Slop Back in the Box

Comments Filter:

  • You don't need to hold back (Score:4, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday July 10, 2025 @08:50PM (#65511388)

    Why don't you tell us how you really feel about this?

    • Re:You don't need to hold back (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rujiel ( 1632063 ) on Thursday July 10, 2025 @10:36PM (#65511526)
      It is slop. There is no objective value; the only motive is monetization. AI lets people who can't create anything edge out the people who can, and confuse anyone who can't tell the difference.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I think slop is pretty accurate. The few I've been caught out on are basically repetitive photo montages or stolen video clips playing over an AI generated script spoked by an AI generated voice, and not only contradict themselves in multiple places but bear little relation to the real world facts they're supposed to be discussing.

      Sure, you can block the channels when you come across them but they proliferate like the supposedly local-to-you drop-shipping Chinese merchants on eBay.

    • I found this summary fascinating. There are 284 words of which 48 (17%) are descriptive as such:
      slop
      slop channels
      spam
      brainrot
      mass-produced and repetitious content
      rampant proliferation of slop content flowing
      landslide of trash content
      legions of fake and often misleading videos
      the sludge-filled sewer
      AI slop
      infected most social media platforms
      obviously fake stories
      quick AI generated videos to make a quick buck


      Its as if the summary was written specifically for a web scraper.

  • YouTube cares about nothing but $$$$ (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 ) on Thursday July 10, 2025 @09:04PM (#65511400)

    YouTube's only concern these days is revenue and profit.

    They breach their own community guidelines each and every day by running scam ads that continue to run despite hundreds or even thousand viewer-reports. Those ads run until the advertiser's spend is exhausted -- however if a creator (the life-blood of the platform) is falsely accused of "scams or deceptive practices" by YT's AI then they're gone in the blink of an eye.

    They also allow AI spambots to post endless comments linking to porn pages/sites and claim that their AI can't automatically detect such things -- although that same AI, when unleashed on creator's videos, constantly demonetizes anything that is deemed to be unsuitable.

    I hate the AI dross that is overwhelming YT as much as anyone but I really have doubts that YT intends to do anything effective to stem its flow. You see, so long as AI-generated videos are getting eyeballs on ads, YouTube will be happy because they'll be generating revenue and profits.

    Let's face it, YouTube is actually *encouraging* the use of AI on its platform. AI suggests ideas for new videos and will create thumbnails for you. VEO3 will even create shorts or entire videos on demand. Google wants to sell its AI services and is pitching them at YouTube creators so they're not going to shoot themselves in the foot are they?

    This is why I'm moving to self-hosting my own videos on an instance of PeerTube and I encourage other creators to do the same. When you self-host you have *FULL* control and you no longer have to worry about censorship or losing your entire community just because one of YT's AI bots has runamok and identifies your cute cat videos as CSAM.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ZipK ( 1051658 )

      YouTube's only concern these days is revenue and profit.

      When was YouTube's only concern otherwise? Even in its early years, YouTube's concern about growth was a byproduct of a concern about building revenue and profit.

    • Add "Sponsored" videos to the list. I honestly think they are there to make the user experience more shit. If you watch science videos it pushes religion; if you're interested in astronomy it suggests astrology. They're obviously just adverts in a different format, judging by all the ones I see for crypto trading, but I think there's more to them. It's almost as though the purpose of the algorithm is to make users want to sign up to Premium and pay to avoid the shit it shovels at them.
    • YouTube has never made profit the entire time its been around. but the data they get for there ads make it worth it for google.
      • That is an unknown since Google (or rather Alphabet) decided some years ago to not separate YT in their earnings reports so only they know themselves if they have turned a profit or not with YT.

    • > YouTube's only concern these days is revenue and profit.

      Which is ironic, because the shittier things become, the more it'll drive people away - not immediately, they may even see usage spikes because of engagement, but sooner or later the bubble bursts.

      > This is why I'm moving to self-hosting my own videos on an instance of PeerTube and I encourage other creators to do the same. When you self-host you have *FULL* control and you no longer have to worry about censorship or losing your entire communit

  • Has anybody else? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Thursday July 10, 2025 @09:12PM (#65511414)

    Has anybody else (who uses YouTube a good bit) never knowingly seen an AI generated video on YouTube? I ask because I hear all these accounts of AI generated slop ruining YouTube, meanwhile I don't think I've ever seen a single video that came off as being AI generated.

    It's probably just my usage patterns but I'm genuinely curious in regards to how big a problem this really is as if it really is a big enough one it will eventually show up for me too.

    • i've never seen it, only heard about it
      https://www.youtube.com/result... [youtube.com]

    • I use it for older music videos that I like, and for technology tutor type videos. I ignore everything else. I did hear a podcast today where on tiktoc that AI was basically "cloning" other peoples videos for $$$$$. For what I use them for, that is not a concern for me.

    • I've seen what is clearly automated scraping of other channel content being used to generate "highlight reels" with AI created thumbnails. Basically they're hijacking content with views, repackaging it in order to present it as new, and then spamming YouTube with variations on it to see what sticks. The algorithms will help trend anything that gets traction - if you scrape enough interesting content and then throw it at the wall, you can get some instances to trend.

      The one instance I can say was probably

    • Re:Has anybody else? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Whateverthisis ( 7004192 ) on Thursday July 10, 2025 @09:56PM (#65511470)
      I see it all the time. I watch a lot of videos on science fiction and fantasy, like Quinn's Ideas (I won't link it but great channel). Real creators who are passionate about their topic are getting drowned out by similar content videos that, if you know the content, are clearly incorrect and use an AI generated voiceover. Many of them are well optimized for YouTube's algorithm, so they get pulled up quickly in your feed and drown out the content creators; several creators are begging for likes and subscirbes now because they've seen their videos get drowned out in a flood of copycat material.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Copying and remaking videos has been a problem for a long time on YouTube, and AI made it even cheaper and easier to do.

        That said the only AI stuff I've seen are fake movie trailers in 1950s style, and a few bit of AI generated imagery in history videos to illustrate events from before cameras were invented.

        • TBH I find those "50's-style" retro movie trailers to be awesome, a guilty pleasure. Another one I love is these videos that match something like people out on a ship and a giant lovecraftian monster is coming out of the water to threaten them, with the video presenting it like it's real. That stuff is clearly fake and kind of fun.

          But I do see a lot of Warhammer 40k stuff where an AI voiceover is just reading from the wikis and making up AI art that doesn't even match the voiceovers, same with Star War

    • I did a test. I opened youtube.com in a private window with no ad blockers. The front page had the usual garbage trying to figure out what bucket I'm in (sports/comedy/liberal/conservative/minecraft/pop music/etc.) but none looked like AI. I typed "funny" into the search bar and just clicked random videos for a while. I came across one channel, ( https://www.youtube.com/@DrPla... [youtube.com] ) which was made in 2019, has 12 videos, and has 3.6 million subscribers. The videos are all clickbait but also... could be AI? T

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by shoor ( 33382 )

      Maybe you've seen stuff and not realized it was AI generated. I've clicked on stuff supposedly by Jordan Peterson or Peter Zeihan for instance, and something wasn't right. At first I was wondering what gives? Then I figured out, or somebody in the comments figured out for me, that it was AI generated slop. Now I spot that kind of stuff easily, but it's annoying to even waste a fraction of a second looking at it to figure out it's slop and move on.

    • I'm constantly bombarded with two types of videos: fake car announcements ("Introducing the brand new 2026 Edsel!") and shocking stories ("Judge was ready to sentence her to life, but her testimony shocked the courtroom!")

      Granted, each style of video is more like a slideshow rather than a full video, but they are obviously automatically generated. So far, they are easy to identify just by the stupid titles, rollover previews, or critically low views, but they are slowly getting better.

      I have a lot of subs

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dvice ( 6309704 )

      I use youtube always in private mode to avoid going into a bubble. I see AI generated stuff pretty much every session in the shorts. Mostly related countries or babies and possibly just from two youtubers.

      In the long videos AI generated video is much rarer, but there is huge amount of copied content that could have been copied by AI or a human, it is pretty impossible to tell which was used, but it is certain that the content is copied, either from movides, TV, anime or other youtubers. There are also quite

    • nearly every video trying to sell soemthing have the genric ai voice. seen it on news stuff to.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MTEK ( 2826397 )

      Never seen it myself, but I have many interests and have been following the same 100 channels for years. But, I can see this becoming a problem. LLMs are very attractive for no-talent hacks who only care about making a buck.

    • It is only a problem if you follow the suggestions placed by YouTube, The AI slop creators know how to manipulate the algorithm to get into the "suggested" bar that is on the right hand side by default.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kazymyr ( 190114 )

      I have. A few actually. It was on a music channel where the creator used AI to make imagery for her original music. It was tastefully done and clearly labeled as AI-generated imagery over original human-made music. It was also very easy to tell that it was AI generated.

    • I've seen trailers for movies that don't exist and music videos of two artists singing together to another artist's music... that don't exist either.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      I think it's talking about the AI-generated science-fiction stories that keep showing up in the sidebar (if you use the default-view mode). If they're talking about the ones I'm thinking of, the titles are typically along the lines of "We thought everything was fine, until the humans came," or some schlock like that. I've never actually *watched* one of the videos, but I don't need to; you can tell they're AI generated from the thumbnail and title. I've hit "Don't Recommend Channel" on at least a couple

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jonadab ( 583620 )
        Oh, there are also "reaction" channels with an anime character in lieu of an actual human reactor. But again, those are older and probably not what the article is talking about. (I suspect those may have got started because there were people who for one reason or another wanted to create reaction content without showing their face, which is fundamentally unworkable for obvious reasons, but that doesn't always stop people from trying things.)
  • I did a google search recently, and it put their AI results on top, and it seemed kind of sketchy, and at the end it said: "According to youtube videos". I shit you not. It seems like AI's are talking to AI's now. I think it was about nutrition information, I forget about exactly what now. I often ask google if this or that about what I am eating. I wonder what AI's really know about nutrition information? Are AI's doing the Telephone game with other AI's?

  • It's almost like... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Thursday July 10, 2025 @09:17PM (#65511420)

    It's almost like your feed is what you like to watch. Mine has "AI slop" only in the specific music genre I enjoy. As in specific type of music from themed from a specific sci-fi universe. And this "AI slop" is mostly excellent quality stuff. Good enough to grab the audio and put it on my phone to play in my car.

    Everything else is still the same as always - channels I enjoy watching and their popular videos.

    Now if you're a low memory persistence, medium IQ dopamine addict, you may actually get a lot of AI slop in your feed. As in actual slop, not the good stuff. Because that's what you actually like watching in short term, and then your low memory persistence means you fail to recognize it in before enough of the next video is watched by you so that algorithm assumes you'll click on the next one too. Which it is correct in assuming, as your low memory persistence will get you to click on it again and again.

    And just because you hate yourself for liking AI slop, doesn't mean that youtube has a problem with AI slop. It's a "you" problem, not a "youTUBE" problem.

    • My minor concern with youtube... it plays about 100 songs that it knows that I like on a loop. It does "get me going", but I also feel "stuck in the mud" a bit. I wish there was a checkbox on the top that gives me the choices of: "Play me my favorites", "Play me songs similar to what I like", "Play me something different", "Play me something I would never listen to".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by allo ( 1728082 )

        Same for Spotify. They probably play the content that's cheap for them, not that's refreshing for you.

        • It does not let me grow as a person, to let me expand my horizons. To let me be as a kid like I used to be listening to the AM radio with the Kasie Kasim show and the top 40.

          • It does not let me grow as a person, to let me expand my horizons.

            I was given to furiously to think when I read your post. I came to the conclusion that for myself, the responsibility to grow as a person requires my personal commitment to do so. It isn't something that can be showered upon me by factors outside myself. This isn't just music, this is everything.

            BUT, It's Friday, the weekend beckons, and there's an indie band playing at a restaurant I've never been to, and I raided the couch cushions for some spare change. I may not like the music or the food, but then agai

            • I like your spirit! Carry on!

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by allo ( 1728082 )

              To grow as a person needs commitment. If I want to get a new taste of music, I should actively seek for new music.

              But I do not want a new taste, I want a new playlist. Don't lock me into "You get this playlist, because you heard this songs in the last playlist" loops, but give me something new! Spotify has enough music that I do not need to hear any song twice. Yeah, of course I rather hear some songs twice than listen to music that is not my taste, but the different "radio" playlists are filled with like t

        • Or their algorithm just sucks.

          Discover Weekly was a good way to expand your palette, then about 12-18 months ago, it went of the rails for me, recommending old classic rock that I can't stand. I think recent changes may have improved it, so I'm giving it another chance.

          I have found hundreds of individual songs via DW over the past 10 years. In many cases I explored the bands' catalogs and found new favorite artists

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by allo ( 1728082 )

            I hate how they change the taste based playlists from endless radios to fixed size playlists. On the other hand, I am not sure if the radio contained that much more songs than the playlists do now.

      • 100? Lucky you, I usually end up looped in 3 songs...
        I'm back to setting up Amarok and its dynamic playlists.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        There are two ways around that. First is being very active in hitting "not interested" after adding songs you like to a playlist (or just ripping them to a local storage). This will mostly remove it from the recommended page.

        Second is to go to a song you like, and then scroll through recommendations on right side below the video. As in really scroll, for a few pages. You'll probably find something similar.

    • And if you're addicted to crack or heroin, it's not the drug dealer's fault for getting you hooked in the first place...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Addiction isn't a problem. It's a mechanism. Normal people are addicted to delicious food, drink, normative sexual attractors, etc. None of these are pathological.

        It becomes pathological when it becomes damaging. Making tasty food is fine. Massive overeating is bad. Normal sexuality is good. Being a far activist nutbag fucking 20 strangers a day in unprotected manner and then claiming that HIV is a social construct to oppress gays is pathological (bonus points if you know what extremely well cited far left

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rujiel ( 1632063 )

      Bullshit. If you enjoy anything synthwave, any retro game music, any funk, youtube will slot this garbage in with the rest of your recommendations. It has nothing to do with being a "medium IQ dopamine addict". But you've already prepared an out for your nonsense point by distinguishing some AI generated music as "good stuff", whatever the fuck that means. So either it's "good stuff" and it's the viewer's fault for not realizing it, or it's the viewer's fault for being a "dopamine addict".

      Again--bullshit.

      • He said he only listens to a "specific type of music from themed from a specific sci-fi universe". Not sure what that means exactly, but it doesn't point toward a broad understanding or deep appreciation of music. Are you surprised he's entertained by AI?

        That's who AI content appeals to - those who don't know any better, or just don't care. Those with a playlist full of AI-generated Captain Underpants theme song variations labeled, "The Good Stuff". (I can hear a distant voice screaming, "Well at least it's

    • It's a "you" problem, not a "youTUBE" problem.

      Pretty sure I'm not liking all the AI comments, but I still see them everywhere. I also use private mode to check out any video not from one of my subbed channels, so YouTube won't shove every video from that same channel down my throat for the next three weeks.

      To YouTube's credit, among "regular" videos, my recommendations are actually quite sane. But the AI stuff... yeah, I get way too damn much of it. Based on my browsing habits, I really don't think it's a "me" problem. Same with the YouTube "Playab

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        AI comments are garbage, but I was on youtube since before it was bought by google. I've seen it being much, much worse. But this isn't really relevant to the topic, as topic is AI generated content, not comments.

        If you get "AI stuff" you don't want to see, just keep telling youtube to recommend less of this (triple dot > not interested). I've found this working quite well. But best thing is to literally just consistently scroll past and ignore. It will go away very quickly.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rujiel ( 1632063 )
          Youtube doesn't even try to keep track of what is AI generated or otherwise, so choosing "not interested" isn't going to have the effect you think it does. Hiding channels is the only option, and it's not even a good one when there are new AI trash channels every day from same of the same greedy assholes you hid the day before.

    • It's almost like your feed is what you like to watch. Mine has "AI slop" only in the specific music genre I enjoy.

      So what you're saying is that even your feed which as nothing to do with AI is full of AI slop? Like ... that's the point. Hope you don't actually enjoy music, soon it seems like it'll all be created by a computer - at least as Youtube is concerned.

      I don't have music on my feed. I have movies. And my feed started being filled with fake AI trailers for movies that aren't being made and won't exist. I'm glad you like your AI music, I don't like this fake trailer bullshit and no amount of clicking the remove b

    • There is a pretty awesome AI generated video with War Pigs as the song. It is actually fairly old now. It paints an interesting (not in a good way) reality.

      Oh shit. It is gone. The only trace I can find is:

      https://www.reddit.com/r/black... [reddit.com]

  • Oh, did they mean .... (Score:3)

    by buss_error ( 142273 ) on Thursday July 10, 2025 @10:40PM (#65511542) Homepage Journal

    The video platform said it requires YouTubers to create "original" and "authentic" content, but now it will "better identify mass-produced and repetitious content."

    But YouTube already says you can't repost Hollywood content!

  • Don't try to handle AI in any special way. Handle low quality content.
    The problem is not AI or AI content, the problem is that the filters and the sorting for high quality content doesn't work well enough. If you only sort AI down, you'll miss out on the good AI stuff (arguably drowned by the low quality one), but still have the human slop drowning the human quality content.

  • The Irony is Beautiful (Score:3)

    by NobleNobbler ( 9626406 ) on Friday July 11, 2025 @06:06AM (#65511968)

    Imagine dumping trillions of dollars and hyping the hell out of something and then banning it's output in a real use-case without any awareness or cognitive dissonance

  • Find the youtubers you like and stop paying attention to the algorithmic feed.

  • AI Generated content is very easy to spot. And given YouTube scans every video uploaded for inappropriate content, I'm sure they could spare a few CPU cycles to detect AI-generated content and just block it entirely.

    I wish Meta would do the same thing. It's getting out of control.

    • AI generated stuff is relatively easy for humans to detect but extremely difficult for computers to detect, which is why there's a whole generation of students who have had their grades wiped out by snake-oil "AI detectors" falsely flagging their essays as AI.

      What you're asking for will result in a ton of false positives and will do little to slow the stream of AI generated crap.

      I'd also add it's probably something Google wouldn't want to do anyway. If someone creates a video with an AI movie generation too

  • ... here is a whacky idea - AI slop is uploaded because there is an economic incentive to do it. Remove the incentive and it won't happen. Start by letting people report it, or saying why they're "not interested" in a channel. It shouldn't take much to identify this trash and demonetize it or send it straight to the bottom.

Slashdot Top Deals

We declare the names of all variables and functions. Yet the Tao has no type specifier.

Close