YouTube’s system for suppressing low-quality AI content mistakenly targeted Kurzgesagt, leaving the channel with its worst-performing upload since 2013.

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    3 hours ago

    Reminds me of that comic the other day

    Kurzgesagt: Let’s keep our art human made.

    Google: Kurzgesagt, your content looks like this low quality AI slop!

    🤖: I’D LIKE TO THANK KURZGESAGT FOR BEING A BIG INSPIRATION TO ME.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Vacuum up the internet, provide generative “AI” for people to spew tons of garbage on to the internet. Everyone hates AI, and advertisers don’t want ads showing against AI slop. AI can’t accurately detect AI and kills real content providers that advertisers want to show ads for.

    Brilliant. What will they come up with next?

  • takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    9 hours ago

    At the same time YouTube offers a prompt to generate more AI content.

    No, this is just a stunt to claim that it is difficult to detect AI slop, when in reality they want that content as it is more addictive, especially to kids.

  • Killmeister@lemmus.org
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    3 hours ago

    Use AI channel blocker, but I guess most of you people use phones or tablets so you’re fucked either way

  • ManixT@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    Yet YouTube Music is absolutely rife with AI bullshit. So much fake-ass viking, cowboy, or other ‘badass’ AI generated slop.

    • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      thats why im always hitting the report button. be part of the solution. not passively part of the problem.

      • ManixT@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        I’ve been craving a feature like that. Maybe it’s because I use YouTube Music Desktop, but there’s no damn report button!

      • nshibj@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        I would say that being part of the solution is not using their service at all.

    • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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      10 hours ago

      Or “just discovered” 1970s Berlin krautrock space stuff… it’s all nonsense

    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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      13 hours ago

      As someone who likes Tyr, Hulkoff, Skald, and Danheim I swear to fuck I want to beat someone’s head in with my musket stock. Seriously the quality just drops and I can only block so many channels, half tempted to just to download all their music and make a fucked up mega playlist on my phone.

      Anyone know a good way to download YouTube music on Linux, preferably a program and not a website.

      • mamg22@sh.itjust.works
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        9 hours ago

        Up until a few months ago, I would normally use spotDL, a tool you gave a Spotify url and it’d search the same songs on multiple sites and download them, while tagging it with spotify’s metadata, which is quite clean. Absolutely amazing piece of software helped me build a good music library, but Spotify changed their api auth because of Anna’s archive scraping, requiring you to have premium just to have a useful api key, breaking spotdl for pretty much everyone.

        I currently use just yt-dlp to pull from yt music, SoundCloud and bandcamp. It’s alright, metadata is bad tho, yt-dlp doesn’t tag very well out of the box. I’ve tried torrenting and soulseek, you can get some good quality (and big!) files, but can be hard to find niche artists (Argentinian hardbass sure is niche as hell)

        I’d too be interested in a tool like that if anyone knows one.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    18 hours ago

    I was recently accused on Lemmy of using AI to write up a post (laced with links to appropriate Wikipedia articles).

    I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

    • picnic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 hours ago

      Well back in the day I when playing competitive fps in european ladder my own clanmates accused me of cheating

      Its kinda of flattering, isnt it?

    • cRazi_man@europe.pub
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      16 hours ago

      This is the shit state of the world now. Everything gets accused of being AI by someone. The AI tech bros have well and truly won. They’ve poisoned everything.

    • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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      14 hours ago

      This is exactly why I hold anti-AI folk in low regard, because they have yet to demonstrate their “detection” abilities to discern between human and generated creations. They are basically psychics and ghost whisperers.

      • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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        11 hours ago

        As AI gets better this is increasingly true too. Back when it was irregular fingers it was a lot easier. And tbh, there is plenty of AI content I don’t really mind.

        Its often ok. It doesn’t have to be great if there is little to no high quality human made content to compare it to in the same niche. I don’t think any human artists have made an album about the Isstvan massacre.

        • mobyduck648@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          I don’t think any human artists have made an album about the Isstvan massacre.

          How on Earth are there warhammer fans who haven’t heard of Bolt Thrower?

  • FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    YouTube’s bullshit is having some interesting effects for sure. Have you noticed how more and more channels are now including short clips of them doing the actual voiceover? It’s usually not even that long, like a second or two or sometimes even less. But apparently that’s now needed to prove that there’s an actual human behind the channel.

    I do find it a bit distracting, but I’d rather not lose those channels either…

    • Bluewing@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      Even that doesn’t always work. There is one channel I know of that got auto banned despite using live shots of everyone doing live introductions of their stories.

      • FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        This shit reminds me of that helicopter gunner scene in Full Metal Jacket:

        “Everyone who doesn’t show their face is an AI. Everyone who does show their face is a well-disciplined AI.”

        Problem is that most people and automated systems are downright terrible at figuring out what’s actually AI. Even AI itself can’t always tell if it’s AI.

        I’ve had people accuse my posts on social media as AI, just because I can write more than two sentences without spelling errors. Since they can’t, they think nobody can…

        So now I tend to leave the occasional delibarete spelling mistake just so people don’t think this was written by ChatGPT. Unless I put that in my prompt, obviously 😂

  • dektep@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    we need an option to report obvious AI use in videos. currently there is no option to report ai

  • stevles@aussie.zone
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    1 day ago

    Using AI to detect AI has, time and time again, proven to be a broken idea. Here is Google with a genius idea: use AI to detect AI, to prevent AI videos.

    Keep in mind folks, this is a global top-three company in terms of revenue.

  • shirro@aussie.zone
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    22 hours ago

    Not sure it’s possible to fight machine generated slop on the big platforms now. People who invest a lot of time and effort are being squeezed out. Businesses that don’t give a fuck about quality upload multiple low effort videos a week across multiple channels getting massive views, probably most from gaming the system.

    Sad for the people who spend months researching, writing and producing videos but this might be the end of the ride as far as making videos as a day job. The platform doesn’t value them or their loyal viewers.

    The creators facing burnout who don’t leave out of disgust will join the slop machine and start championing it. Starting to see it already.

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Yeah, it’s bad.

    Non-watermarked slop is going to be impossible to detect going forward, and the false detections are going to get worse.

    The fundamental issue is the monetization scheme. It’s just too lucrative for spammers. YouTube’s economics are broken, and getting worse.

    …Hence, no matter what YouTube says, YouTube is going to double down on “detectors,” because Alphabet leadership couldn’t care less about destroying longstanding creators. Their only objective is to suppress just enough spam to keep ad buyers unconcerned next quarter, no matter the long term damage; that’s someone else’s problem.

    • dreamkeeper@literature.cafe
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      13 hours ago

      We need a law that requires AI-generated videos to be watermarked and huge fines for the streaming companies that allow unmarked videos.

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        That won’t work for long. Generation can be hosted in a country outside the jurisdiction.

        Current services do need such a law anyway, and many already are watermarked. But I’m just saying it wouldn’t even slow down spammers once they figure it out.

        • Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 hours ago

          that’s why the law shouldn’t apply to just generation. as long as something is delivered (even if over the internet) to EU places, then the EU law mandating AI labels applies.

    • thehatfox@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The best solution would be to turn away from detectors, which will always be a losing game, and return to crowdsourced curation through users likes and ratings.

      But that would end up with too many of the corporate propaganda videos getting tanked with dislikes so YouTube will never go for that.

      • DrakeAlbrecht@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        For every ten users who decry AI voices and animation, a thousand more will blindly click “Like” and “Subscribe”. The people have spoken, and they want to eat straight from the fertilizer pile.

        • MrQuallzin@pie.eyeofthestorm.place
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          1 day ago

          People only click like and subscribe because their other options were taken from them. They got tired of the people speaking up so removed the options to do so.

          • Zarobi@aussie.zone
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            1 day ago

            I’ve run my own anecdotal and admittedly small blind trials on friends and family. Most people unfortunately preferred the A.I. slop to real human content. My theory is because it tends to be brought and shiny. The only actual study I could find online, told participants which is which, kind of defeating the purpose in my opinion.

            • joe@lemmy.world
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              9 hours ago

              There was recently a study using human short stories and LLM generated short stories prompted to write a similar story. The participants where told which stories were AI generated, but sometimes they were lied to, and told a human-written story was AI generated.

              The study showed that people liked the AI stories more. It also showed that if someone has a negative bias against AI generated content, they’d claim the AI story was worse, even if it were actually the human story and they were just told it was AI.

              Also, another test was performed where they provided a story and asked them if it was AI generated or human generated. The participants could only tell the AI written story 45% to 50% of the time. Essentially, they were guessing.

              More info: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/05/ai-generated-stories-rated-better-quality-than-human-written-ones-study-finds

              I think many people have taken a mental snapshot of the quality of AI generated content from a couple years ago and just assumed it hasn’t improved since then.

            • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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              12 hours ago

              It’s engagement optimized, that’s why.

              That’s the whole point of the spam; being engagement bait.

              Same thing applies to any human made clickbait, and people have demonstrated they simply cannot help themselves, and click it.

          • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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            1 day ago

            nah, they are doing that because they are good taught consumers who know well how to follow orders obediently. It’s just so convenient to not think, just do what they tell them. aah have you seen that animation, and the sound effect?!

    • Ilixtze@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      I feel It is less that AI content is difficult to detect and more that the AI technology Youtube is using to detect it is complete trash.

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I respectfully disagree.

        Have you seen what Minimax H3 can output, on a desktop? Even dirt-cheap AI video gen is basically undetectable now. I think all YouTube can filter is the absolute “bottom barrel” spammers still using some old model because they don’t know any better.

        And if they train detectors on “stereotypical” AI output like Ghibli style or flat colors or whatever, they’re just going to nuke channels like Kurzgesagt while most AI slop spammers adapt to get through. There’s literally nothing for detectors to go on anymore.


        …But also, YT doesn’t even care.

        The filters make next quarter look better because they do catch the bottom barrel, and that’s all that matters.

        If the slop videos get through, the average user won’t see the difference either, so why should they care?

        • historicaldocuments@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          There’s literally nothing for detectors to go on anymore.

          It’s harder for users as well. Even youtubers I’ve followed for a while have started using the recipe of having a ridculous thumbnail such as “WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER BUY THIS” with an arrow pointing to something. After a couple of times of catching me because I own one of the things the arrow is pointing to (and then watching a 10:01 long video not talking about the item in question) I decided not to fall for it. I noticed that discovery of a new channel got hard. They’re all following the recipe now since I guess youtube mandates it, so it’s the same bas relief thumbnails that seem like they pose a question and a video that doesn’t answer it. We’ll end up with a new Betteridge’s Law and the resource youtube once was is lost forever and we’ll stand around making dumb faces thinking how we’re all getting ripped off…

          • lechekaflan@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            Makes me angry my country is now split as far as AI slop awareness is concerned: some are opposed (look up so-called Pax Silica), while others are embracing the garbage full on as if it’s gonna make them more money, and still others unaware it could affect them sooner or later, especially as the government thinks AI is a boon when it’s really not.

          • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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            22 hours ago

            To be fair, people generally won’t keep up with something they aren’t interested in, much less something they are actively disinterested in. That’s reasonable.

            I do have an irrational pet peeve of people making claims on something they know little about though, which is why I may have come on as hostile…

    • FerrisEuler@programming.dev
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      1 day ago

      Seems the same pattern at X, probably because they hired in an ex-YouTuber at the top. Moderation algorithms are universally very poorly written and don’t appear to have gotten better in the last 6-8 years when they began using them to replace human moderators. On X they seem to have a timer for new accounts that puts a fake label on accounts as if they’re spamming or a bot, when it’s just a real user with opinions the algorithm is trained to dislike. Same exact crap the old Twitter did. They put the source code on the web and it showed how if you posted or replied on any of a broad range of topics, your account was scored lower until you were deemed low quality and made invisible. It’s like they just wanted cat memes and recipes from elderly women, but not many of them on Twitter or X. Probably because they hired in people from companies where non-controversial topics were a much larger share of what was discussed there. 1 trick ponies who weren’t suitable for doing the same job at X.

      There’s no way to boost ad views or MAU with that approach. I believe X will never be profitable due to those people running the show and Musk not ever hiring anyone a lot better to run X. Musk had a similarly bad experience with Solar city. Another company he didn’t know enough about to manage himself and the people he hired to do it weren’t good enough either.

      • Korkki@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        Youtube and X is basically a private monopolies. They only care about the profit margins. Any and all extra expenditure to R&D or consumer satisfaction is just a cut to their profits today and since they don’t have any real competition, so why raise quality of service above the bare minimum? Their only real selling point is that everybody uses them, so everybody will have to keep using them, if they want to be seen or access most things. they don’t care if they serve slop, because you and me and the wider masses are going to eat it up anyway.

        • FerrisEuler@programming.dev
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          1 day ago

          X loses money so no margins there. Twitter has never made a profit in its history that I’ve ever heard of. Facebook’s on the way out. 20 years ago it was college age users. 10 years ago it was people over 50. Now it’s a lot of commercial accounts posting as they do on other basically dying or dead platforms. The only sign of life is streaming video and chats related to streaming video. YouTube has been losing users and content creators to both Rumble and Twitch. The right 1/3 of America is on Rumble while Twitch took the gamers. Youtube still has business but they basically gave away enough business to make those 2 relevant.

          Alphabet’s dependent on Youtube, cloud services, web search, and related ads to pay for the unprofitable parts of the business, which appears to be where the bulk of their employees work, rather than at the earnings-generators. If they screw up youtube, then they will have to lay a lot of the people in the fun and interesting jobs off, along with the many layers of bureaucracy and non-coders working in jobs that nobody’s quite sure what they do there. They can’t really afford to screw up youtube any more than they have. It can’t merely do well. It has to do great to pay all of their bills. Very similar to the action-hero movies at the movie studio paying for all the unprofitable ones that most people work on

          • lechekaflan@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            What’s mostly keeping those platforms afloat is, unfortunately, people in developing countries where social media usage is very heavy to the point it’s literally its own internet such as Facebook’s walled garden.