Your YouTube Shorts feed might soon be filled with a lot more AI-generated content from your favorite creators — including AI-generated versions of the creators themselves. In his annual letter released today, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan says that sometime this year, creators will be able to make Shorts using their “own likeness.”
Mohan didn’t share further details about these likenesses. “We’ll have more to share soon, including the launch date and how the feature will work,” according to YouTube spokesperson Boot Bullwinkle. But the likenesses are part of a growing push from YouTube into AI tools; this year, creators will also be able to use AI to make games with a text prompt (a feature already available in closed beta) and “experiment with music,” Mohan says. YouTube already offers creators tools like an AI chatbot for channel analytics, AI-powered auto-dubbing, and AI-generated video clips for Shorts.
YouTube has also had to reckon with AI slop on its platform, and Mohan’s letter has a brief section dedicated entirely to discussing the topic. “Over the past 20 years, we’ve learned not to impose any preconceived notions on the creator ecosystem,” according to Mohan, but he says that “with this openness comes a responsibility to maintain the high quality viewing experience that people want.” He also says YouTube is “actively building on our established systems that have been very successful in combatting spam and clickbait, and reducing the spread of low quality, repetitive content.”
Shorts are getting other new features, too. Mohan says that YouTube will be integrating “different formats,” including image posts, “directly into the feed” this year. He reports that Shorts now average “200 billion daily views.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
