Famous YouTubers, such as Rick Beato and Rhett Shull, report that they have noticed changes in their videos and, as it turns out, the company has indeed been making alterations using AI technology without their consent.
Shull and Beato were not the first to notice the issue. Complaints on social media date back at least to June, with users posting close-up shots of strange body features and questioning YouTube’s intentions.
The changes are almost invisible, such as alterations in skin color and texture or smoothing out wrinkled clothing.
More than 2,7 billion people around the world use YouTube every month, with India having the largest number of users (491 million) as of at least February.
Many YouTubers, however, expressed frustration-not only because of the arbitrariness of the move, but also due to the subtle yet unwelcome sense of artificial technology intruding on authentic content.
After months of complaints to the relevant departments, the company finally confirmed that it has indeed made modifications to a limited number of videos on YouTube Shorts, the platform’s short-form video feature.
“We are running an experiment on selected YouTube Shorts that uses traditional machine learning technology to de-blur, denoise, and enhance video clarity during processing (similar to what modern smartphones do when recording video),” said Rene Ritchie, YouTube’s Creator Liaison and head of editorial, in a post on X.
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