YouTube collaborates with OpenAI and AI-like functions

YouTube on Wednesday announced plans to let users create their own AI versions for video sharing this year, in line with the capabilities of ChatGPT maker OpenAI’s video creation app Sora.

“AI will be a boon for creators who are proactive,” CEO Neil Mohan wrote in his annual letter outlining the platform’s priorities for 2026.

The Google-owned video platform sees AI as the next game-changing technology for content creation, comparing it to previous innovations like music synthesizers and Photoshop.

The company said more than 1 million channels used YouTube’s AI creation tools every day in December.

Mohan said YouTube will significantly expand its artificial intelligence tools for creators this year, allowing them to create games from simple text prompts.

The ability to generate short videos using your own likeness follows Sora’s Cameo feature launched by OpenAI last year, which allows users to insert their own likeness and voice into AI-generated videos.

Google and OpenAI are locked in a fierce AI race, with the search engine giant pushing generative AI capabilities into products like Gmail and Maps, as well as promoting ChatGPT’s competitor Gemini chatbot.

Google said in an email to AFP that it will announce more details about the feature soon.

In his letter, Mohan asserted that “AI will continue to be a tool for expression, not a replacement for human creators.”

This addressed growing concerns about the quality and reliability of AI-generated content, as well as concerns about the long-term survival of creative industries in the face of technology.

The platform will require creators to disclose altered or synthetic content, and will provide creators with tools to control unauthorized use of their likeness in AI-generated videos.

Mohan said YouTube is also building a system to combat “AI slop,” which is low-quality automated content, by adapting existing anti-spam and anti-clickbait measures.

The video service has been the top streaming platform in terms of hours watched in the U.S. for nearly three years, according to Nielsen data. Its short video feature “Shorts” currently boasts an average of 200 billion views per day.