The discourse around unlicensed training of AI models on YouTube videos has drawn the ire of multiple creators both big and small, but YouTube’s new AI opt-in feature should now give them some degree of control. According to the latest report, YouTube creators can weigh in on whether third-party AI services can have permission to use their content.
Not only will YouTube’s AI opt-in feature give them the ability to say “No” to AI makers, but they can also choose to say “Yes” to any specific company they prefer from the list of 18 top AI businesses that are quite well-known today.
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YouTube’s AI Opt-in Feature Is a Step in the Right Direction
For the most part, anyone who puts information online has resigned themselves to the fact that their data is no longer exclusively theirs. With YouTube as well, content creators are used to their data frequently being stolen and reshared, although the company has put some measures in place to allow them to execute a content copyright strike against stolen content. The situation becomes much harder to regulate when third-party, off-platform services begin to steal the data.
In the last few months, there has been considerable discussion surrounding AI companies using transcripts from thousands of YouTube videos to train their tools. From Nvidia to OpenAI, everyone has seen their share of accusations regarding the same. The use of content without permission is part of the problem but there is also the matter of AI companies making a profit on the work of creators who put in the work making the content.
Now, with YouTube’s AI opt-in feature, creators can determine if they want their content to be available to AI companies. Some may see potential for collaboration with these businesses and can then voluntarily share their content.
YouTube creators can provide permission to third-party AI companies like Apple, Amazon, Adobe, ByteDance, Perplexity, OpenAI, Meta, Stability AI, etc., and determine if they want to help build their genAI models.
How Do You Find the YouTube AI Training Option?
If you’re a creator on YouTube and want to opt out of these services, it’s easy enough to do. The option will be available on the YouTube Studio Setting page where the channel is maintained. Look for the “Third-party training” option to find the setting. If you don’t want any third-party AI services to access your content, the permission will be turned off by default.
If you want to opt-in to provide support for training AI models, you can either give permission to all companies to use your data or handpick specific companies and allow them to access your videos.
There are no immediate benefits or compensation plans for opting into the service right now. Permitting AI companies may increase your visibility to them or open up doors for future partnerships, but there is no evidence of any such plans. It is also unclear to what degree these AI businesses will respect the creators’ decision to back out of sharing their data as there are no reliable safeguards in place to ensure it, but this is a good first step by Google.
YouTube Is Taking AI Activity Seriously
Not only is YouTube letting creators decide whether they want to help train AI models, but it is also looking into putting in checks to allow for the identification of AI content. The company has developed “new synthetic-singing identification technology within Content ID,” which aims to help partners delete AI content that imitates singing voices to help them protect their abilities and identities.
YouTube is also working on developing tech to help personalities detect and manage AI-generated content that resembles them or uses their faces in a misleading way. The Content ID system is a big step forward for the platform, and YouTube has already required all creators to disclose when they use AI content in their videos to avoid any confusion.
This isn’t to say that YouTube and Google don’t have their own hands in the proverbial AI basket, but they also state that they are committed to “ensuring that YouTube content used across Google or YouTube for the development of our AI-powered tools is done responsibly.”
Google And YouTube May Still Continue to Use the Data
Google and YouTube’s terms of service and agreement with creators remain unchanged so it looks like the company will continue to access user content to train its own AI models. From the outside, this AI opt-in feature looks more like a strategy to prevent other AI companies from scraping YouTube content rather than a genuine attempt to protect users’ interests, but that’s a conversation for a later date.
The recent news on YouTube’s AI training regulations is a decent step forward in the mission to combat misuse of data and protect individual ownership of the same, but the guidelines will have to keep evolving to keep up with the AI landscape.