AI Has Officially Taken Over (on YouTube)

0:00Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Lauren Schnipper. I'm Joshua Cohen. Lauren. What? I was thinking about YouTube, as I often do. Tell me more. And I was thinking YouTube is basically a copyright infringement platform. Go on. It wasn't conceived of that way, but early on on YouTube, that's what proliferated on the platform. Oh, yeah. I mean, you could argue that I had a guy on SNL. Yeah. and the fact that that was available on YouTube and not really available anywhere else online that you could easily watch it. I mean, that's the first video I remember someone showing me.

0:38It's like, yo, you got to go to YouTube and watch this thing. First time I went on YouTube was the 48-hour film festival in New York City, and I was living there in like 2004 or 5. And if you recall, it was like a 48-hour film festival was literally like you get to this location. I feel like they gave you some kernel of something that you had to do. I think ours was like silent film. And you make a film in 48 hours, which now seems like it's kind of no big deal. But it was like crazy back then. So crazy. It was really, really hard to do. So at the time I was dating a guy who was like a documentary film producer.

1:09He had a friend who was an editor. Obviously, I starred in the film. He was the star of the film. And the editor, this guy who still works, he's like an editor. I think he does like unscripted. Anyway, he was like, I'm going to upload it on this platform. He didn't say platform. He's this website called YouTube. And that was the first time I'd ever heard about YouTube. And I've gone to like search for that 48 Hour Film Festival short film. It won some award. It wasn't like the best one, but it won. I'm sure it won some award, Lauren. I mean, in the 48 Hour Film Festival little circuit. Anyway, that was the first time I never heard it.

1:41It was before I moved to Los Angeles. So it was like before 2006. Maybe you missed your calling. Maybe you could have been a silent film star. I feel like everybody would have benefited from me being a silent film star. Go on. That was probably one of the few pieces of non-copyrighted content that was uploaded to YouTube early on. Famously, in March 2007, Viacom sued YouTube and Google, who was a parent's company by then, for over$1 billion, alleging, quote, massive intentional copyright infringement, end quote. The suit claimed more than 160 ,000 clips from shows like The Daily Show, SpongeBob, and South Park have been posted without permission.

2:18Viacom's CEOs have never seen a major company, quote, behave in such a willful way for so long. End quote. So can I tell you a ramification of that lawsuit, which is so funny to me? I went to the Montreal Just for Last comedy festival with Shane Dawson. Call it like 20. I mean, when was that suit? When was that suit? It was in 2007, but they dragged on for many. No, I'm saying because it was probably like 2009, 2010. So it was still dragging on. And I ran into a buddy of mine named Dana Dude, who's still a comedian. And he was hosting a show on MTV. I don't remember what it was. and he's like, I introduced him to Shane.

2:54He kind of knew who he was and he's like, oh, would you like be on the show? We're going to do some stuff. And when he was on it, he couldn't say I'm a YouTuber because it was Viacom. I'll never forget that because the show was like on MTV or something like that. He had to like be like, I make videos on the internet and I'm a big deal. The suit wasn't settled till almost seven years later. Yeah, it was crazy. It went on forever. In 2014 when they jointly settled out of court and came to some resolution because by then just the whole entertainment industry had changed. But so what YouTube did was they took this lawsuit that they got from Viacom and they used it as an impetus to start content ID.

3:28And it was this program, is this program that let copyright owners see what of their programming was being distributed online, where it was being distributed, the kind of viewership it was getting. And gave them the ability to either block that content so it couldn't be viewed anymore or claim that content so that then they could benefit from the revenue generated. So they can monetize it. But to be to just just just just to step in here for a minute, that second option, not an option initially. It was only like you could take it down. And then eventually they said you could then monetize it. Totally.

4:01And they were developing this before the Viacom lawsuit because these things take time. But then after the Viacom lawsuit, they really accelerated this. And this became a huge boon to YouTube because one, it made these copyright owners feel a lot more comfortable putting their programming on the platform. and two, gave them a viable monetization strategy for their content that was being copyrighted. And it's developed this whole cottage industry of rights claiming on YouTube where there are dozens of companies that work with big publishers and big rights holders and big creators to claim their content on the platform so they can make a few extra bucks from it.

4:38All in all, the payout trajectory of Content ID has been massive. So it made$1 billion by 2014, $2 billion by 2016, $3 billion by 2018. And as of December 2024, YouTube said it paid out$12 billion total to rights holders through Content ID, including$3 billion alone in 2024. And this is payouts. This isn't just the revenue generated. Right, I was going to say, that's the 50-55 %? Yeah, that's the 55 % split. In 2024, YouTube also set a process more than 2.2 billion copyright claims through Content ID, and over 99 % were initiated automatically

5:21Why am I thinking about content ID here? I don't know, Josh. You tell me your point. I love this history lesson, though. I'm enjoying it. Bringing me back. Bringing me back. It's a great question. Bringing me back. I used to have a guy at Universal because, you know, parody was you're allowed to do parody videos. But like it doesn't matter. Like the Universals of the world used to take them down. And so, you know, again, in my days working with Shane Dawson, he would do a lot of them. And then I would they would inevitably like take them down and I would I would email the guy. I think she might have been a gal.

5:51I don't know. And then we would get him back up. Just saying. Happened all the time. That was like people's full time jobs. Yeah. At a certain point. Oh, yeah. For some people. Probably. Yeah. So why am I bringing this up? Fantastic question. Thank you so much. At Google I.O. this week, Google announced that they're releasing this Gemini Omni tool into YouTube, specifically YouTube Shorts, which is going to let users reimagine a short in a different visual style or insert themselves directly into someone else's short. YouTube says that these remixed shorts are going to get watermarks and unique identifiers flagging them as AI generated.

6:29And so this is YouTube's own language on Omni. Quote, remixing with Omni delivers a fresh way for users to create and build on each other's imagination. The model better understands user intent, creating more consistent and meaningful storytelling while also handling complex video and audio adjustments behind the scenes. I think it's interesting where YouTube is giving creators the opportunity to create lots of their own deepfakes. And presumably those deepfakes are gonna be used for great purposes, for storytelling purposes, for creativity purposes, but also oftentimes for nefarious purposes.

7:03And YouTube knows they're going to be used for nefarious purposes too, so they're creating the content ID side of this AI generative content as well. This is from Neil Mohan's 2026 annual letter. In January, he said, quote, It's becoming harder to detect what's real and what's AI generated. This is particularly critical when it comes to deepfakes. We're also building on the foundation of content ID, a system our partners have trusted for well over a decade, to equip creators with new tools to manage the use of their likeness in AI-generated content. And this likeness detection tool that YouTube is creating works basically exactly like Content ID.

7:38It scans for visual matches of an enrolled person's face, and then users can request removal, file a copyright claim, or do nothing. Major agencies like CAA, UTA, and WME have already shaped and participated in the rollout. YouTube also made an announcement last month that said they basically are rolling it out to any public figure, whether you're on YouTube or not. So you can take advantage of this, which is kind of ingenious with YouTube ingratiating themselves to the film and television and world of Hollywood. They are hosting the Oscars in a couple of years, so they have to start doing something.

8:12Totally. So what I think is really interesting here is that you have on one side, like YouTube was basically a copyright infringement platform. Google and YouTube are creating the ability to make all these different kinds of deepfakes and all these different types of AI content that could very well be copyright infringing in the vast majority of cases. But then like they created content ID, they're also creating the solution for this. And so they're contributing to the problem, but then also creating the solution. And they own both ends of the spectrum. Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts. I have a lot of thoughts.

8:44Well, first of all, I think that, you know, obviously several years ago I was working in sort of this venture arm of a company and I got pitched this video platform. It was called Trash. I'm not kidding. I did not like the name. They ended up getting acquired, I want to say, by like Vimeo or something like that. But I remember what I thought was sort of at the time ingenious is that they were building it with the understanding that copyright infringement would happen. like from jump whereas youtube did not build from that point of view and in fact kind of there was a lot of fighting against and figuring it out and what's the right move and who you know should we you know there it was just because it was just early days and people didn't you know so there was a lot of just sort of like copyright is a bad thing you know the fact that stuff is whereas like this other platform was just coming like this is gonna shit's gonna get stolen it's all good like you can monetize it you can take it down like what do you want to do like let's just start from that like kind of like base level level setting table stakes.

9:38That's the word I'm looking for. So I feel like that they're table stakes thing with this like AI because they're like, this shit's happening. It's going to do it. Let's own it. Like we know, we know that what we've built, we also know we have to build a solution. But like the sort of like cynical version of me is sort of the pessimist in me is like, I think a lot about, I don't know if anybody's done any listening or you have ever done any research about sort of how pervasive and kind of terrible like Wikipedia is. But like Wikipedia is, was sort of, you know, came to be as this sort of like, oh, we're unbiased and we're just this thing and we're this crowdsourcing like kind of encyclopedia.

10:12And if you do like half a second of Googling and sort of research on it, it's literally controlled by like five people that have very specific and strong points of view. I think it's a little bit hyperbolic, but it's a smaller group of people than you. Oh, it's like 10. There's like 10 people. Even the founder of Wikipedia, you can find videos of him just being like, he's been like shut out of things. And they will, like, let's say you as an individual can change something on a thing, but they control then armies of people that will go and, like, change and change and then you just give up. But people, generally speaking, think it of as gospel because so many websites, including Google, including Facebook, you search for something and it comes from Wikipedia.

10:50So it is like, even if you never go on this website, wikipedia.com, you go on Wikipedia, like, almost every day. And it's just kind of it's scary how these tentacles get out there in a way that is ultimately controlled by very few individuals. And I'm not somebody who's like I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm not somebody that's like billionaires are terrible and all these things, a big conglomerate. I'm like, I think that there's a place. But I just don't I don't think people are educated enough and understand how pervasive this is. And I think to the point of what you're saying is like I don't think people necessarily understand that YouTube is both owning the problem and the solution.

11:25And like, I'm not saying that that's a good or bad thing. I'm just saying I don't know. I don't feel like people know. Do you know what I'm saying? And I think that's kind of scary when we are being influenced by all of this every single day. And I think there's a lot of negative things that come from that. You're saying it's just like not known by the general public that this one company or one organization or small subset of individuals, the policy decisions that they make then just have their tentacles kind of like in everything, in everything. and people just don't realize it. They just don't because it's just so, I mean, you know, speaking of Google, there's Google Classroom, there's Google, you know, it's everywhere.

11:59Like Wikipedia is every, like it's just people don't understand and even if they kind of understand that they don't really grasp the sense of like, ultimately that comes down, boils down to like very few individuals that are having a massive amount of influence on information. And it's just, it's just kind of like, again, this is like, you know, coming from just a neutral kind of place. It's just kind of a scary prospect. like you know what I mean and I and there you can argue that like Encyclopedia Britannica was ultimately the heck had a few editors but like because it was something you had to buy and it was in your hand and it didn't it wasn't able to like by definition scale as fast as the other thing other things there was a level of friction that you kind of understood that this was coming from a point of view whereas this other stuff is like you you just out there it's just out there and it just it seems it's like the air we breathe it's just like it's what it is you know what I I mean, so I'm happy to take on the role of just educating the masses and just opening up everybody's eyes a little bit more to the circumstances that we live in.

12:56How do you do it all, Josh? Like, really? I don't understand. It's just like. It's a heavy weight to bear, but I'm happy to bear it. Thank you so much. And just getting back to the YouTube, AI, Google content idea of it all. I think very interesting. The corollaries here and just now in 2026, they're facing this different existential problem where AI is about to make identity as. easily coppable as any kind of video clip. And they're running the same playbook. Again, they're building the detection infrastructure and giving rights holders a way to monetize instead of just remove that gets everybody more invested in YouTube as the place where rules are enforced and gets just everyone's more buy-in into the platform.

13:34I think it's insidious and also ingenious. I get it. I'm not mad at it. I mean, I agree. Sorry, that's what I'm going to say. I agree with you. Insidious and ingenious. Okay, big news coming up. Guys, the time has come. X has said it is entering its creator era. Everybody take a moment. Guess what they're doing? Oh, something that nobody's ever done before, but they are putting together some sort of branded content marketplace that every other platform in the entire world has done. And I'm not saying they shouldn't do it, but it's like, here we are today. So basically this past March, X revamped its creator subscriptions.

14:17Basically, they describe it as a powerful new tool to grow your subscription. But it feels like it's ostensibly kind of trying to challenge places like Substack. Substack, newsletters, all those things are really kind of growing. So X is trying to have some sort of solution. But their new creator product is called Creator Connect, a marketplace that hooks up brands and creators for brand deals. Everybody's done this. YouTube, TikTok, Snap, they've all done it. But basically, the deal is, according to the Hollywood Reporter, when a brand enters a creator connected and wants to run a specific campaign, X will use AI to plow through thousands of creators, text, videos, and photo content, and then identify which ones the brand should be working with.

14:58And then we'll reach out to those creators and see if they're interested. So ostensibly, there's a level of AI involved in this that might be a little bit of a differentiator. So brands, again, ostensibly will be able to connect with the kind of creators that make the most sense because AI is like scouring everything. X's global head of content partnerships, Mitchell Smith, said that Creator Connect will pair blue chip brands to a lot of rising creators and niche creators, not just that upper 1%, but actually creators that have an audience and authenticity in a specific space that might be a mile deep, even if it's an inch wide.

15:30So again, there's sort of like the differentiator here is potentially, you know, this AI that's going to get to creators you wouldn't otherwise. What we can do is we can provide clients with a brand new AI-powered system to essentially select the most impactful creators on the platform. So we look at it as a hyper-intelligent creator-led branded content solution where we're essentially leveraging proprietary tooling through our sister company, XAI, to pair the most suitable creators on the platform with client-specific campaign needs. Lauren, this is coming at a time when X, I don't think is having an existential crisis necessarily, but realizes that there are competitors that are gaining on them.

16:09If you look at Meta's threads, its monthly active users have shot up to around 400 to 450 million right now versus X's 560 to 600 million. X is still dominating, but threads is catching up there. Where X does really shine is on web traffic. Threads from Meta wasn't designed really for the web, has 8.5 million daily visits to its website where X has 145 million. But still, these year-over-year trends in terms of users are really showing that X has some competition here and there are other viable alternatives that people are flocking to. Blue Sky as well shows increases in traffic over time. And I think it's coming at this moment where X has tried a bunch of these different types of creator initiatives.

16:53Some of them really worked. Some haven't. And it really needs to, like other platforms, level up its game and incentivize creators in any given way possible to stay on the platform. And a way you can do that is by incentivizing brands to spend more money with those creators on the platform. YouTube's doing the same thing with its creator marketplace. And Brandcast was all about the way YouTube is facilitating this deal packaging for the shows from high profile creators. every single platform that didn't have a version of this is is going to have a version of this because that's what they need to keep creators happy that's why it's sort of like table stakes my favorite i think that's going to be the drinking game word of this episode um that they need to build something like this but so okay great fine we'll see what happens um i think again the big different differentiator here is potentially like if the ai can really you know find and surface those creators that are you know otherwise sort of like not as known but have a very engaged audience.

17:51I mean, you know, if there's a drumbeat that's sort of like where we are with the creator economy right now, it's that follower count doesn't matter. And it's like level of engagement and level of kind of, you know, influence in the truest sense of the word. And so I think that there's a lot of potential really interesting. I'll be interested to see if in like, you know, six months, there's like some crazy campaigns with some creators nobody's ever heard of because they've just like have this crazy loyal audience. And there are going to be some instances here that are going to get covered by different advertising publications or just cultural publications online talking about how X's AI or any platform's AI suggested that these creators pair well with these types of brands.

18:32I think marketers are going to have various degrees of fallout from that. But overall, this is where the ecosystem in the industry is going. And I think what's interesting about this space is it just has to be as good or marginally better than the humans that were making these decisions before. It's not like self-driving cars. There's not a union behind these or groups of communities or people that are saying, hey, we don't want these self-driving cars in our neighborhood because it's going to take people's jobs. There's no like overarching kind of organizational structure that's going to prohibit these marketers from using these tools as opposed to humans moving forward.

19:14So there's just a much smaller hurdle for like full adoption of this across the whole entire ecosystem. Okay, Josh, let's just get to uploads and downloads this week. I want to start with one, the Duolingo Owl. It's got a new feature where it's called Focus Mode. Duolingo's latest iOS feature doesn't just ask you to study. It makes you study by physically locking you out of, guess what, TikTok, X, Instagram, and any other app that would be any sense of distraction. So interesting that it's an app. There's many apps out there that are like trying to, you know, give you time limits and, you know, various different incentives in order to stay off your kind of, you know, your phones or your socials.

19:57But this is this is the first one I'm hearing that's like a defensive. No, I would say offensive sort of just like I'm here. You need to be on my app. And so as a result, I'm going to stop you from being on other apps. I feel like that's kind of a little bit of like a new thing. Am I wrong? You're not wrong. It's usually these features that limit the amount of time you're able to stay on the app or within each individual app or on your own as a whole. Or individual app that's like there to do that for everything else. Correct. Right. Like, so this is like, I feel like I'm, I think it's like an upload because I think it's interesting.

20:33I think it's an interesting marketing tactic because then what it also does is it pushes Duolingo to like, we're a good app. Yes, you're on your phone, but you're learning. Spend all your time with us. Who cares if it's eight hours on your phone a day? You're learning a language, right? It's insidious, but also ingenious. Oh, God, that's also the theme of this episode. I love it. I do like this though and it's not like YouTube can come out with this and get away with it. YouTube can't say, hey, you got to watch 15 minutes of video a day before you open up any other app on your phone. That's what I'm saying.

21:05Can you imagine if like Facebook was like, listen, Instagram's like, we're actually going to shut off TikTok. That'd be amazing actually. I kind of love that. Cut to like two years from now and Neil Mohan's on stage being like, and we will shut off all the other apps. People are cheering. It's going to be amazing. And what's a genius from this from an engineering POV is they're utilizing just your system settings on Apple rather than going because they wouldn't have the ability to go into each of these individual apps. Well, I imagine that there's like some terms of TOS that you were going to have to like re-sign up for in order to enable this to happen.

21:39Presumably. But I just think it's like very elegant way to solve this issue about like, okay, you're spending too much time on your phone. You should be doing this fun thing that we happen to provide for you. Educational. Also educational. Educational. I just love this. Lauren, quick upload for you. So Tom Brady. Heard of him. Yes. He is the goat of football. And now he's coming to YouTube. He wants to be the goat of football trivia too. He is on this latest episode of the show called Chasers. That's only on YouTube. And it's about testing different individuals' football knowledge. chasers also happens to be produced by tom brady's production company shadow lion this is just the latest in a athlete to youtube trajectory we've seen basically been become established over the last several years and now is just accelerating it used to be like a dirt path leaving from athlete to youtube and now it's becoming like a four-lane highway so this is what i wrote two years ago.

22:48Sure. On LinkedIn, I said the biggest celebrities in the world are now on YouTube. They're just not film or television stars. They're athletes. And this was noticing when LeBron James started a video podcast that went direct to YouTube with his production company and just looking at all the different types of celebrities that are athletes on the platform. So the Kelsey Brothers with New Heights, the Pat McAfee show, Gilbert Arenas has a podcast with Underdog. At YouTube's Brandcast event, they talked about Norwegian soccer superstar Erling Haaland and how he has a show about the upcoming World Cup coming to YouTube.

23:25Dwayne Wade appeared on stage with Jesser. So these athletes that have this extreme notoriety in their vertical are looking at ways to extend their careers. And they're doing that on YouTube where if you're a fan of Dwayne Wade and you have been for the last 10 years plus since he's been playing basketball, you're probably going to go watch his programming on YouTube. They have the ability, the distribution, the audience is there now. YouTube is quickly becoming this celebrity haven that the powers that be at YouTube have always wanted it to be. It's just not happening in the exact vertical that they expected.

24:00Can I just, if I may, just having a tad bit of insider information. It's like they want it, but it also has to be the right kind of person, celebrity, that understands the platform and wants to really work at it. Because you can't, you know, imagine like, you know, a big giant TV star, maybe a former talk show. They just come and they come to YouTube and they're like, I'm ready for my like close up. It's like that's not really kind of my point of view, from what I've heard. Like that's not that exciting. That's honestly a pain in the ass because it's like, is that person going to do the work? Because at the end of the day, it's a grind.

24:32And you have to be. But those are the types of people used to YouTube used to be able to like covet and want like they wanted the rock on the platform. Right. But you are you are you are listening continue to list people that like kind of know how to do this and kind of understand that they have to like continue to make content and make it a lot. And it can't be crazy expensive and like all that fun stuff. And I just feel like it's like I think that what's great about the athletes is that they are listen by the very nature. These are people to hustle and then work their ass off in a very sort of grind like fashion.

25:00So they come on a platform where that is also required and so that they get it. And so I think that's a great, it's a great obvious cohort that finally is seeing the value. And I think it makes a lot of sense. Grind like fashion. I love that for me. When Dwayne Wade was on stage with Jesser at Brandcast, Jesser made the joke. He's like, yo, Dwayne Wade and I, we shot this video. You can see behind me. It was very cool. And afterwards we played a little one-on-one. I actually did pretty good. And Dwayne Wade was like, no, you didn't. thought it was great these professional athletes when it comes to their sport they're just like nah brah no nah brah no nah brah um all right josh i think we did it lauren i think that's it i'll see you just collecting checks because you're claiming everybody who's taking your likeness and i mean it's just like money views from it i mean just for days just mailbox money mailbox money uh-huh if not there see you in two weeks we're out next week do this travel but we'll We'll see you in two weeks right back here on Creator Upload.