I’m huge into makeup, and I watch a lot of beauty content on YouTube because I want to see how certain makeup looks and performs before I buy it. This AI bullshit defeats the purpose of demonstrating makeup.
YouTube secretly used AI to edit people's videos. The results could bend reality
Submitted 16 hours ago by Davriellelouna@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250822-youtube-is-using-ai-to-edit-videos-without-permission
Comments
klemptor@startrek.website 11 hours ago
Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 hours ago
From what I’ve seen so far, the case here seems to be that it’s only being done to shorts, and what’s happening is that they’re being permanently stored at a lower quality and size and are then upscaled on the fly. I mean… it feels kinda fair to me. Imtheres a good reason YouTube has so little competition, and it’s because how hard and expensive maintaining a service like this is. They’re always trying to cut costs, and storage is gonna be a big cost. Personally, I’m glad it’s just shorts for now. It absolutely shouldn’t be happening to people who are paying for the service or making money for it, though.
ObviouslyNotBanana@piefed.world 15 hours ago
I mean yeah, it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. But if it actually was reasonable, wouldn't they just inform the uploader?
T156@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Or give an option to toggle. Surely letting people turn it off would save them even more resources, if they don’t have to bother with upscaling the video in the first place.
Zarxrax@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
It would not make any sense for them to be upscaled on the fly. It’s a computationally intensive operation, and storage space is cheap. Is there any evidence of it being done on the fly?
baggins@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
It would if they can do it on your device.
TheRealKuni@piefed.social 15 hours ago
It’s not that computationally intensive to upscale frames. TVs have been doing it algorithmically for ages and looking good doing it. Hell, nVidia graphics cards can do it for every single frame of high end games with DLSS. Calling it “AI” because the type of algorithm it’s using is just cashing in on the buzzword.
(Unless I’m misunderstanding what’s going on.)
Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
It would make sense if it’s a scheme to inject ads directly into the stream so adblockers wouldn’t work anymore.
Dragomus@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
It’s not so much that they down- and upscale the video of shorts, their algorithm changes the look of people. It warps skin and does a strange sort of sharpening that makes things look quite unreal and almost plastic.
It is a filter that evens the look with images generated by, say, grok or one of the other AI filters.
In a year people will think that “AI-look” is a normal video look, and stuff generated with it is what humans can look like. We will see crazed AI-fashion looks popping up.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
Yeah, upscaling can generate artefacts and such.
archchan@lemmy.ml 5 hours ago
Knowing Google, they care more about blurring the lines between AI and reality to confuse and force it onto people than they do about saving a few dollars on storage costs.
Kissaki@feddit.org 14 hours ago
someguy3@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
It’s very likely to do with compression codecs to save money.
RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com 6 hours ago
Ostensibly, yes. Just like the Patriot Act was to fight terrorism.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 13 hours ago
Seems like this should be illegal, Google should be broken up, and its leadership imprisoned
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
I’m down for a breakup but I don’t see how we could twist this into illegality.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 8 hours ago
You could probably make it illegal to alter people’s videos without their explicit consent. But also the Republicans have shown us that laws mean what the people in charge want
jonesey71@lemmus.org 6 hours ago
It might not be currently illegal but I think there should be a law defining “crimes against society” that only applies to corporations and politicians. It could be vague like “disorderly conduct” but just for corpos and politicians and would include things like lying to the public and could have punishments like corpos losing their business license (death) and banishment to the moon/sun for politicians.
FinalRemix@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
We say that so often, it’s lost meaning.
jerkface@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
This is shitty journalism that massively distorts what actually happened. It’s just traditional video filters, and AI panic.
Sp00kyB00k@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
There is no AI panic. There is a distrust against the intention of the companies pushing it. Can you trust Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Anthropic etc?
jerkface@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
There is an AI panic, just like there was a microprocessor panic 50 years ago. Distrust and panic are different things. There is also AI distrust. There is also an AI revolution, an AI bubble, and a whole new AI epoch. There’s lots of AI shit going on right now, and panic is certainly one of them.
victorz@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
I KNEW THOSE SHORTS I’VE BEEN WATCHING HAD THE “AI LOOK” GOD-DAMNIT! With the smooth faces and the weird plastic looking contrast.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 hours ago
Don’t watch shorts
victorz@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Why? I like shorts, bite sized, shaped for mobile when I’m in bed or shitting, interesting content — my feed is very curated after many years of training it, so I only ever get interesting stuff, no brain rot 👍. Coincidentally my Watch Later list is getting out of control. 😓
basiclemmon98@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 hours ago
Well, youtube is not even intended to host quality content anymore, But besides that, this appears to just be visual tweaks. This title is trying to be vague enough that one could assume it’s tweaking the content itself which would be of real concern. It’s not doing that (for now). Video graphics seems like an awefully minor thing to be screaming about AI over. Especially when AI has actual reprocussions in the knowledge accuracy sector.
xthexder@l.sw0.com 10 hours ago
From what I’ve heard this mostly happens on YT Shorts, and the AI upscaling they’re doing is making people look like plastic and uncanny as hell.
I haven’t noticed on normal videos, since that’s pretty much all I watch.
zeropointone@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
It’s a great way to make money. Pay extra to opt out of AI enhancement!
_cryptagion@anarchist.nexus 14 hours ago
there might be a few youtubers or purists who would pay to opt out of something like that, but the average uploader isn't gonna give two shits about enhancements youtube makes. especially when it took this long for a few people to even notice.
zeropointone@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I know. Not even one percent of the population can see and hear the difference. Most people can’t even tell what’s human-made and what’s AI slop.
desmosthenes@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
yucky, shorts lol
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
“AI”
Sharpening, Denoising and upscaling barely count as machine learning. They don’t require AI neural networks.
hushable@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Sharpening is a simple convolution, doesn’t even count as ML
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
The “ai bad” brainrot has everyone thinking that any algorithm is AI and all AI is ChatGPT.
feinstruktur@lemmy.ml 11 hours ago
Thisthisthis
CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Sharpening and denoising don’t. But upscalers worth anything do require neural nets.
Anything that uses a neural network is the definition of AI.
ccunix@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Not true
Company I used to work for had excellent upscalers running on FPGAs that they developed 20+ years ago.
The algorithms have been there for years, just AI gives it bit of marketing sprinkle to something that has been a solved problem for years.
Evotech@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
But you can use AI for that