A general wisdom is that ai-generated content, or “slops” as colloquially known, will crave our skin. AI models tend to produce creepy faces, broken hands, and fantastical scenarios. For example, a short YouTube video shows a baby who finds himself shimming a luggage loader on top of a jumbo jet before flying the plane wearing an aviation headset. It has received over 103 million views.
There are also videos generated by other AIs that are beginning to dominate the platform in almost the same way that they have multiplied across Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. Some of YouTube's most popular channels are currently highly powered with AI-generated content.
I originally thought this would be a problem for YouTube, but it was working on something that looked like a new form of spam, but the general lack of complaints from advertisers, coupled with the growth and appreciation comments of the AI content gangbuster from viewers, changed my views. People seem happy to immerse themselves in the canyon with Slop, and that's not a problem for Alphabet's most valuable assets after Google search. It's exactly the opposite.
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Earlier this month, YouTube, which was able to outperform this year's Walt Disney company as the world's largest media company, has been able to slash its balancing policy and thrive on its platform without treating AI-generated videos as spam.
The new rules cut ad revenue from low-effort repetitive content. Their creators may exploit AI tools like 11 labs to create synthetic audio that reads scripts scraped from Reddit on top of a slideshow of stock images. Some of these videos have got hundreds of thousands of views.
However, the overall approach to video platforms is that as long as the content generated by AI is original, provides value to the audience and includes human input, it is fine. For now, it appears to be measuring it on a case-by-case basis. YouTube is neither a stranger to fight spam.
In fact, the company says that even if 92% of creators on the site use the generator AI tool, policy updates seem to make advertisers feel at ease. Advertisers have an implicit understanding that more AI on YouTube means more content and more revenue.
It helps that the industry has years of experience trying to monitor nasty content that shines next to brands online, from racism to conspiracy theory. They learned it was a horse-drawn game for years.
YouTube clearly wants AI content to flourish. Sister company Google says it will bring Video-Generation Tool Veo3 to YouTube shorts later this summer. The company says AI will “unlock the creativity” of content creators.
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However, unlocking new forms of profit is easier in the alphabet than in the creators. Check out Ahmet Iit, an Istanbul-based creator behind the Viral Pilot Baby video. His channel has won hundreds of millions of views, but he only received an estimated $2,600 in his most viral post. The majority of his audience comes from countries like India where advertising fees are low.
Yiğit says he spends hours on a single scene, juggling 12 tools. Even this new generation of AI creators suggests that Alphabet will earn advertising revenue from the output, while the less can work. As long as the content machine is running, it doesn't matter whether AI video is quick, easy or tough. It just drives views and ads.
That's why YouTube is leaning harder towards welcoming slops than police it. The company needs to tell the creator whether the video contains AI, but the resulting disclaimer is listed in the small textual description that viewers need to click and read, making it difficult to find. It's little to deal with the growing confusion about real and compositing, as more YouTubers compete to leverage AI content.
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The risk is that slops drown out human work more thoughtfully as they flop the YouTube recommended algorithms of feed and juice. The big early YouTube hits were a slice of life like the infamous clip Charlie biting my fingers. What happens when the next wave of viral hits is unrelated to reality and instead offers a strange, dreamy baby sequence dressed to the stormtrooper, or when Donald Trump beats a bully in an alley?
Perhaps they will reflect and deepen our sense of disconnection from real life. AI may turn out to be a boon to YouTube, but it offers an unsettling future for the rest of us. ©Bloomberg
The author is a Bloomberg opinion columnist who covers technology.
