YouTube Shorts are being edited by AI automatically. But Google didn't bother to inform creators about it.
The issue has blown up over the past couple of weeks, with several reports pointing out that something looked wrong in videos.
BBC points out this problem may have started more than 2 months ago. Here is one thread from June 2025 that highlighted how YouTube was using AI upscaling to make the image appear look better. But the result was anything but better, it was smudgy, like an oil painting. The user said that upscaling artifacts were noticeable when you changed the video's resolution, too. This is the video in question.
Rhett Shull, a guitarist, has published a video where he outlines the problem. He showcased a comparison of Musician, Rick Beato's videos, one of which was uploaded to Instagram Reels, and one to YouTube Shorts. Though the contents of the 2 videos were the same, the image on the YouTube version looked like it was made by AI, with fake hair, skin. The shadows, and objects looked odd too, like they were plastic, or blurry. Some facial textures looked like they were modified fake because of some sharpening, smoothing effects done by the AI. It's kind of difficult to explain the hideousness, but it screams AI.
Shull also compared two of his own videos, observing their discrepancies. At one point in the video, Shull asks his wife, a professional photographer, for her opinion on the videos. She admitted it looks weird, and raised a very important question. "Will people think we are making AI videos?" This could be a legitimate concern for many YouTubers. It could affect their channels, and in turn their earnings, if viewers believed the videos were fake, and stopped watching them.
Some users allege that YouTube was doing this deliberately, to make real videos look like AI, to get people used to generative AI shorts which are currently being tested. That's just what the world needs, AI slop and real videos ruined by AI slop.
Rene Ritchie, YouTube's head of editorial and creator liaison, admitted that these videos were a result of an experiment on select YouTube Shorts is using AI to improve the video quality, and that it uses traditional machine learning. It does not use GenAI, or upscaling. This machine learning technique adds various post-processing effects like unblur, denoise, and improve clarity in videos.
YouTube has been shoving AI features in for a long time, for the better or worse, take your pick. But, AI generated videos on YouTube are a huge problem. Google did say it would prevent inauthentic AI generated videos on YouTube from being monetized. But are these rules for thee and not for me? When the platform deliberately makes a video look inferior, is that nor interfering with the artist's original work? There was no consent, and no option to opt-out of the process as far as I can tell.
Imagine you are a content creator, and you worked hard to produce a video, only to find out your face and other details in the video looked smudgy, like an AI generated video. How would that make you feel?
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