YouTube Is Letting Creators Opt Into Third-Party AI Training

YouTube is introducing an optional feature allowing creators to let third-party companies use their videos to train AI models, with the default setting being opt-out. The Verge reports: "We see this as an important first step in supporting creators and helping them realize new value for their YouTube content in the AI era," a TeamYouTube staffer named Rob says in a support post. "As we gather feedback, we'll continue to explore features that facilitate new forms of collaboration between creators and third-party companies, including options for authorized methods to access content."

YouTube will be rolling out the setting in YouTube Studio "over the next few days," and unauthorized scraping "remains prohibited," Rob writes. Another support page says that you'll be able to pick and choose from a list of third-party companies that can train on your videos or you can simply allow all third-party companies to train on them.

But at what benefit?

[SeaFox]

“We see this as an important first step in supporting creators and helping them realize new value for their YouTube content in the AI era,” a TeamYouTube staffer named Rob says in a support post. “As we gather feedback, we’ll continue to explore features that facilitate new forms of collaboration between creators and third-party companies, including options for authorized methods to access content.”

I skimmed through the full article, and the support post [google.com] referenced in it, and I didn't see anything about the creator receiving anything for allowing the AI companies this access. It's great Alphabet is making this an opt-in thing for creators, but there was no discussion of any compensation. It's another case of "please give us data to make it easier to replace your livelihood with a computer program in the future."

Re:

[PhantomHarlock]

I'll only allow that if they pay me. Otherwise there is zero incentive to give away my work that I monetize on YouTube.

Training your replacement?

[will4]

Please help explain how training an AI to imitate creative work and reduce the need to pay the original creator for future creative output works.

Re:

[dfghjk]

It works great for the owner of the AI, and so little "creative work" has creative content anyway. Just how valuable is YouTube content that can be so easily replaced?

Photo pros bemoaned digital photography for threatening their business, yet the only ones ever threatened were the bad ones. AI doesn't replace creativity, it might replace garbage.

Re:

[dfghjk]

and yet you give it away to viewers on YouTube

I can only imagine how much your YouTube content must be worth judging my the quality of your post

Re: But at what benefit?

[PhantomHarlock]

I make part of my living from YouTube. It is quality original content and none of it is given away...

Re:

[ClickOnThis]

and yet you give it away to viewers on YouTube

Viewers "pay" for YouTube videos by watching ads. Part of the ad revenue goes to the video-creator.

Do you not know how YouTube works?

Re:

[ClickOnThis]

I forgot to mention that some creators also sell merch or encourage sponsorships through PayPal, Patreon, etc.

Re:

[penguinoid]

Just because you can opt-in to share the data with specific third-party AIs doesn't mean Google isn't using or selling your data themselves in accordance to that giant wall of text you agreed to.

Re:

[SeaFox]

Yes, that occurred to me when I was writing my post. I'm sure Alphabet already has an exception for themselves carved out. Not even an amendment needed, as I bet there was language in their original ToS with the kind of blanket right-to-exploit that would cover AI training anyway. They would have he most to gain being the owners of YouTube as a platform already. No need to even contract out the content creation, then. Same reason I keep declining to back up my phone's photos to Google Photos' cloud.

Re:

[rickkw]

I think it makes a lot of sense to allow individual content creators to opt-in because it truly recognizes the intellectual properties by the creators. For popular content creators (say Marques Brownlees), they CAN individually negotiate the deal with any interested AI parties for monetary benefits that make sense to them. This gives the power to the content creators; especially give the less popular content creators (say university online lectures) a voice so that some AI companies (yeah I mean you OpenAI

Opt in vs. out

[OneOfMany07]

You mention both. Please try to be more precise next time.

Opt in means I need to act to be part of the group. Nothing happens if I don't do anything.

Opt out means the opposite (I'm in the group unless I do something).

I was happily surprised by the title... the company was letting users explicitly allow the feature if they wanted, but nope. SOP again. EU = opt in, US = opt out.

Re:

[darkain]

I just checked my account, it was disabled by default. So at least from my point-of-view, it is "opt-in" (USA account)

I say we compromise

[rsilvergun]

All AI must be trained on absolutely nothing but videos of the Mark Gormley power stance.

sounds trustworthy

[dfghjk]

good thing Google can be trusted to respect opt-out indicators. They do a great job with do not track.

I'm a creator!

[vistic]

"I'm an influencer!"

"No. You're raw meat for the AI machine. Now keep dancing and monologuing and being generally human-like. Eventually we'll be able to copy what you're doing PERFECTLY, and you won't be needed."

Is that how everyone else reads it as well? This stupid world. Its in layers.

Why would you do this?

[presearch]

There's no shortage of YT content, Why synthesize more?
Why would creators want more competition in their area of interest, and provide it for free?

I guess it's to bleach out the copyright on someone else's work.