YouTube secretly tested AI video enhancement without notifying creators

Submitted ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨gedaliyah@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/08/youtube-secretly-tested-ai-video-enhancement-without-notifying-creators/

Is it a conspiracy? For months, YouTubers have been quietly griping that something looked off in their recent video uploads. Following a deeper analysis by a popular music channel, Google has now confirmed that it has been testing a feature that uses AI to artificially enhance videos. The company claims this is part of its effort to “provide the best video quality,” but it’s odd that it began doing so without notifying creators or offering any way to opt out of the experiment.

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4grams@awful.systems ⁨15⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
I have noticed that some of the regular creators I watch seem to look a little AI lately. I honestly have been questioning reality a bit; that’s probably the point.

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CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Tinkering in this way with someone‘s work should be regarded as copyright infringement regardless of what their TOS say. It shouldn‘t be allowed and Youtube should pay up big time for this theft. But of course this is probably not how it‘s going to be handled because Google is mega rich and the law does not apply to AI somehow.

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Chozo@fedia.io ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Although, this is a distinction without a difference—it's still AI of a sort being used to modify videos.

It's actually a big difference. "AI" is an almost meaningless term without specifying what type of AI it is. ChatGPT is an AI, Sora is an AI, the "magic eraser" in your photos app is an AI, the AOL chatbot "SmarterChild" was also AI. "AI" can mean almost anything even remotely adjacent to "machine learning" right now. Just calling a tool "AI" says literally nothing about what the tool is or what it does. This sort of reductive, dismissive attitude toward anything an author doesn't understand in tech articles is getting really worrying lately.

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- cecilkorik@piefed.ca ⁨21⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  
  "AI" can mean almost anything even remotely adjacent to "machine learning" right now.
  
  And that's why it's become a meaningless term. If that's what we're being told we're supposed to call it then that's what we're going to call it. Blame greedy companies marketing for that, not the journalists and people trying to make sense of the endless stream of meaningless garbage pouring out of these so-called "AI" companies.
  
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- Flagstaff@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Real “AI” doesn’t exist anyway. We may as well call it Algorithmic Idiocy.
  
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GreenKnight23@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’m sure they also trained their models on all the content at the same time too.

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asteriskeverything@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Fucking hell all the dispotian AI taking over ruling the world shit and no one predicted the much more boring version: a company unleashing a half-assed AI to make their stupid services more profitable and steal all your data and rights to make it happen.

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- ronigami@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That’s a more boring version of the larger thing happening: ruling class decided it’s YOLO time, screw what the middle and lower class think. Buy a dictator, merge the military with the prisons, take over whatever you can.
  
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Whostosay@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Do words not matter anymore when it comes to ‘journalism?’

They didn’t secretly do anything. This was publicly.

If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t fucking know would we?

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- Passerby6497@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  
  Do words not matter anymore when it comes to ‘journalism?’
  
  I think the better question for you is if you think words don’t have real definitions, and do they? What do ‘secretly’ or ‘publicly’ really mean?
  
  They didn’t secretly do anything. This was publicly.
  
  So I can steal from you without telling you, then when you find out, I can claim it was public knowledge because you found out after the fact?
  
  If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t fucking know would we?
  
  Yeah, finding out about something that was done without your knowledge or consent beforehand isn’t doing it secretly if you find out about it later!
  
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- subignition@fedia.io ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  "Secretly tested" meaning they didn't inform users when they started doing it. Y'know, like any experimental feature is called out and explained?
  I hope you're just having a bad day because this is some pretty rough reading comprehension
  
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  - Whostosay@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Both, bad day, but I stand by it. It’s not a secret if what you’re doing is immediately in public view.
    
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- spongebue@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Public now. Secretive at the time.
  
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  - Whostosay@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s a public facing platform.
    
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altphoto@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The app wouldn’t start on my roku. It said “can’t start because there’s not enough space” so I deleted YouTube.

LOL fuck you YouTube assholes! I can’t believe it was that easy. Good riddance!

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- Whostosay@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I can’t say I like how you arrived at this conclusion, but I do like that you arrived at it. Fuck em
  
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  - altphoto@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Well I started deleting apps like crazy and it would still not run. So I did the next best thing and got rid of the problem all together!
    
    It was freeing!
    
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Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Nvidia has been upscaling content for users using the Nvidia shield since I think the 2019 revision, and I think offers the driver level video streaming upscale since 2023 with RTX Video Super Resolution. The concept isn’t exactly new (and there are video players that basically have 3rd party upscale algorithms, doesn’t need to be “AI” to do so)

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- queermunist@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  They airbrushed people’s faces.
  
  If a computer changed my face because I’m too ugly for advertisers I’d fucking kill myself.
  
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  - cecilkorik@piefed.ca ⁨16⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    Killing yourself in that scenario seems like you've selected the wrong target. It's certainly not yourself's fault.
    
    Being unapologetically and relentlessly human is the best revenge we can get on these dehumanizing technologies, and to be human you need to first and foremost be alive.
    
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  - victorz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    I knew I recognized the AI smear face tell sign. I saw people I used to watch and I thought, why do their videos look so strange all of a sudden. Like it’s AI or something.
    
    Faces looked smudged
    
    Contrast was too high
    
    Sometimes weird lighting and odd things happening with the frame rate
    
    Even looked like puppets lip syncing sometimes
    
    I was like 🤔 this has many of the signs of AI video. Wtf is going on here.
    
    LO AND BEHOLD. I knew I wasn’t going crazy.
    
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  - acosmichippo@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    face smoothing is a side effect of AI upscaling, i doubt that was the goal.
    
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- Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That is AI
  
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  - Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Nvidia’s stuff is AI, but things like MadVR and stuff aren’t. Even older upscales like ESRGAN is ML based, but not necessarily AI, as the terms been pretty diluted.
    
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REDACTED@infosec.pub ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
RIP MLG videos

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