SAN FRANCISCO: YouTube announced plans on Jan 21 to allow its users this year to create AI versions of themselves for video sharing, matching a feature from Sora, the video-creation app from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.
"AI will be a boon to the creatives who are ready to lean in," CEO Neal Mohan wrote in an annual letter outlining the platform's priorities for 2026.
The Google-owned video platform sees AI as the next transformative technology for content creation, comparing it to earlier innovations like the music synthesizer and Photoshop.
More than one million channels used YouTube's AI creation tools daily in December, according to the company.
Mohan said YouTube plans to dramatically expand artificial intelligence tools for its creators this year, including allowing them to produce games from simple text prompts.
The ability to generate short videos using your own likeness would follow Sora's cameo feature, which was launched last year by OpenAI and allows users to insert their likeness and voice into AI-generated videos.
Google and OpenAI are caught in an intense AI rivalry, with the search engine giant pushing out generative AI abilities to products such as Gmail and Maps, as well as promoting its Gemini chatbot, a competitor to ChatGPT.
In an email to AFP, Google said it would release more details about the feature soon.
In his letter, Mohan insisted that "AI will remain a tool for expression, not a replacement" for human creators.
This addressed growing concerns about AI-generated content quality and authenticity as well as fears about the long-term survival of creative industries in the face of the technology.
The platform will require creators to disclose altered or synthetic content and plans to give them tools to manage unauthorized use of their likeness in AI-generated videos.
Mohan said YouTube is also building systems to combat "AI slop" – low-quality automated content – by adapting existing anti-spam and clickbait measures.
The video service has been the top streaming platform by watch time in the United States for nearly three years, according to Nielsen data. Its short-form video feature, Shorts, now averages 200 billion daily views. – AFP
