Movie studios have been making serious money from AI slop on YouTube

Regular YouTube users have likely noticed an abundance of AI-generated ">fake movie trailers this past year or so. This annoying AI slop is all over the platform. As it turns out, major movie studios have actually been making money from the videos, according to reporting by Deadline.

The scheme worked sort of like a mob shakedown. Hollywood studios would not enforce copyright on these videos. Instead, they struck a deal with YouTube to ensure they got the ad revenue instead of the people that typed in a couple of prompts and did some light editing. 

One of the most famous of these videos is a bogus trailer for the upcoming Superman reboot. This one actually tricked French national television, leading director James Gunn to post three puking emojis on X. He likely didn’t know that Warner Bros. Discovery was one of the companies racking up cash for these pale imitations.

There’s a question here as to why major film studios would allow their brands to be diluted by AI-generated nonsense. After all, these fake trailers exist right next to the actual teasers and it’s been proven that they can confuse people. We don’t have any actual monetary figures, but the videos have racked up billions of views. Maybe that’s enough for short-sighted companies. The actors union SAG-AFTRA has called the whole thing a "race to the bottom."

In any event, the gravy train has run out of steam. YouTube has turned off ad revenue for these kinds of videos, which was likely done because of Deadline’s reporting. Popular channels that distribute this content, like Screen Culture, have been removed from the partner program. Now nobody will make money from a slightly-off Leonardo DiCaprio making his way ">through a season of Squid Game.

The channels can appeal YouTube’s decision. The founder of a channel called KH Studio, which has amassed hundreds of millions of views, has said that they never intended to mislead viewers. They just wanted to create "what if" scenarios.

"I’ve been running KH Studio full-time for over three years now, putting everything into it. It’s tough to see it grouped under 'misleading content' in the demonetization decision, when my goal has always been to explore creative possibilities – not to misrepresent real releases," they added.

We contacted Screen Culture for comment and will update this post if we hear back. That channel has over 1.4 million subscribers and has posted a whopping 1,800 videos. If something exists, Screen Culture has likely made a fake trailer for it. For instance, the channel has posted over 20 AI-generated trailers for the upcoming Marvel film Fantastic Four: First Steps.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/movie-studios-have-been-making-serious-money-from-ai-slop-on-youtube-160434252.html?src=rss https://www.engadget.com/ai/movie-studios-have-been-making-serious-money-from-ai-slop-on-youtube-160434252.html?src=rss