YouTube addresses creators' concerns that it secretly used AI to edit some videos

Rene Ritchie, YouTube’s creator liaison, said in a post on X that the platform is “running an experiment on select YouTube Shorts that uses traditional machine learning technology.”

YouTube said it plans to offer creators the ability to opt-out of the platform's recent enhancements to some Shorts after a handful of creators expressed concerns the subtle changes were being done without their permission or knowledge.

"Creators, we’ve heard your feedback on YouTube’s deblurring and denoising Shorts," Rene Ritchie, YouTube's creator liaison, wrote Tuesday on X. "There’s a lot of good stuff coming in that pipeline, tbh. But if it’s not for you, we’re working on an opt-out. Stay tuned!"

The announcement comes after creator Rhett Shull posted a video, titled “YouTube Is Using AI to Alter Content (and not telling us)," to his channel this month. Since it was posted 11 days ago, many online have reshared clips of it and tagged YouTube to ask about the claim. One person even posted side-by-side screenshots of Beato’s McCready videos to showcase the subtle changes.

Shull said he shared the video after a friend, YouTuber Rick Beato, called him with a question: Did one of his recent videos look a little off?

Beato's video, which he had uploaded to YouTube Shorts on Aug. 5, was a clip of his interview with Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready. The creator, who is also a music producer and multi-instrumentalist, has built a following of 5.1 million subscribers for his guitar-related content. He'd posted the same video to his Instagram page.