Is that YouTube video clip you’re watching real or was it made with AI?
YouTube wants to make it easier for viewers to know when content on its platform is AI-generated. In 2024, it started labeling content when creators disclosed they have used AI tools. Now YouTube is making AI-generated content labels more prominent for viewers — and it’s going to start automatically applying the labels if it detects that a video includes “significant photorealistic AI use.”
“We’ve heard consistently from our community that they value transparency when it comes to generative AI content,” YouTube said in a blog post Wednesday announcing the updates. “These changes are designed to balance transparency with creator control.”
Under YouTube’s guidelines, creators will still be required to manually disclose when they use realistic AI. But starting this week, it also will roll out a new internal system to help identify AI-generated content. “If a creator doesn’t specify whether or not they used AI, but our systems detect significant photorealistic AI use, we will now automatically apply a label,” YouTube said.
YouTube creators who believe their content was incorrectly flagged as AI-generated can modify the disclosure status using the YouTube Studio tool. However, according to YouTube, the AI labels will “remain permanent” in some cases, including for content created using YouTube’s own AI tools (such as Veo or Dream Screen) and for content that contains C2PA metadata (based on standards from the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) that indicates it was fully AI-generated.
