Skip to main content

YouTube reveals powerful new AI tools for content creators – and we’re scared, frankly

YouTube has announced a whole bunch of AI-powered tools (on top of its existing bits and pieces) that are designed to make life easier for content creators on the platform.

As The Verge spotted, at the ‘Made on YouTube’ event which just took place, one of the big AI revelations made was something called ‘Dream Screen’, an image and video generation facility for YouTube Shorts.

See more

This lets a video creator just type in something that they’d like for a background. Such as, for example, a panda drinking a cup of coffee – given that request, the AI will take the reins and produce such a video background for the clip (or image).

This is how the process will be implemented to begin with – you prompt the AI, and it makes something for you – but eventually, creators will be able to remix content to produce something new, we’re told.

YouTube Studio is also getting an infusion of AI tools that will suggest content that could be made by individual creators, generating topic ideas for videos that might suit them, based on what’s trending with viewers interested in the kind of content that creator normally deals in.

A system of AI-powered music recommendations will also come into play to furnish audio for any given video.

Analysis: Grab the shovel?

Is it us, or does this sound rather scary? Okay, so content creators may find it useful and convenient to be able to drop in AI generated video or image backgrounds really quickly, and have some music layered on top, and so on.

But isn’t this going to just ensure a whole heap of bland – and perhaps homogenous – content flooding onto YouTube? That seems the obvious danger, and maybe one compounded by the broader idea of suggested content that people want to see (according to the great YouTube algorithm) being provided to creators on YouTube.

Is YouTube set to become a video platform groaning under the collective weight of content that gets quickly put together, thanks to AI tools, and shoveled out by the half-ton?

While YouTube seems highly excited about all these new AI utilities and tools, we can’t help but think it’s the beginning of the end for the video site – at least when it comes to meaningful, not generic, content.

We hope we’re wrong, but this whole brave new direction fills us with trepidation more than anything else. A tidal wave of AI-generated this, that, and the other, eclipsing everything else is clearly a prospect that should be heavily guarded against.

You might also like



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TechRadar's Year in Review: AI revolution, smartphone evolution, and visions of the future

If I had to sum up 2023 in one word it would be AI. Okay, technically that’s two initials, but let’s not quibble – because there’s no doubt that it provided the year in tech with its main story arc. Artificial intelligence was everywhere this year, as every company in the world gawped at the massive impact of ChatGPT, and decided they wanted to jump aboard that bandwagon. You could barely move for new chatbots, new image generators, and new AI-enhanced features in every device released in 2023. And there’s no sign of that changing in 2024; in fact, we expect it to be an even bigger deal. Elsewhere, phones and laptops did much the same as they had the previous year – well, except where they had new AI-enhanced features – so it was in the virtual reality space where bigger changes were afoot. If the Meta Quest 3 was impressive then the Apple Vision Pro looks to be genuinely game-changing, and we can’t wait to see what impact it has in the next 12 months. Of course we also saw plenty ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Microsoft and Sony enter "binding agreement" to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation

Microsoft has announced that it has reached a "binding agreement" with Sony, pledging to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.  With Microsoft having won its anti-trust case with the US Federal Trade Commission , its planned acquisition of Call of Duty developers Activision Blizzard has taken a big step closer to becoming a reality. In order to alleviate the concerns of monopoly-building that got Microsoft in legal hot water to begin with, the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, announced yesterday via Tweet that it has entered into an "agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation."  This agreement will no doubt come as a relief to fans concerned that Microsoft's acquisition plans might result in Call of Duty becoming an Xbox exclusive, following in the footsteps of future Bethesda releases. Since Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda caused the studio to break its tradition of offering titles cross-platform for upcomi...
Post a Comment
Read more

This Stardew Valley-like farming sim plays at the bottom of your screen so you work and play at the same time

Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing are among some of the best choices out there if you're looking for a game to get swept up in for hours at a time. But, if you're a fan of management sims and a multitasker as well, this upcoming farming sim will likely pique your interest.  Developed by Mister Morris Games, Rusty's Retirement is an idle-farming simulation game that runs at the bottom of your gaming monitor, allowing you to focus on other tasks like working while you tend to your crops. Set to release in Q1 2024 on Steam , the idle sim puts you in the shoes of a wholesome robot as you grow crops and use them to produce clean and energy-efficient biofuel. Having gathered this "vital robot power source," you'll then need to sell your harvest to the other machine inhabitants of your settlement. This, in turn, will let you reinvest the money into expanding your farm. If you're a terrible procrastinator (like me) this might not sound like your cup of tea...
Post a Comment
Read more