Katarzyna Petru
End of Earning on Autopilot
YouTube is finally taking action against creators who have little to do with "creation." From July 15, the platform will begin enforcing rules that have previously been ignored – if you want to earn money, you must publish original and authentic content. Until now, these rules have primarily targeted those who copied other people's videos; however, the current focus is on those who use generative AI for mass-producing junk content. This refers to videos created without any human involvement: AI spouting random phrases, stock backgrounds, news copied from Google News. It's not only meaningless – it's simply a flood that poisons the entire YouTube ecosystem.
AI as a tool? Yes. As a generator of rubbish? No.
Google doesn’t say “no” to technology as such. The problem isn’t that someone is using AI – the problem is how it’s being used. More and more channels are generating “true crime” stories about murders that never took place. The victims and perpetrators are fictional, but that doesn’t stop the algorithms from promoting this content and driving it to millions of views. Other channels produce music generated by AI – trivial, bland, but looped in a way that extracts listens. Still others provide commentary on events – without commentary. Essentially, these are AI-clones of what can be read on news portals, just wrapped in synthetic voices and stripped of anything that could be called added value.
Changes in the Partner Program will hit the masses
YouTube announces that it will no longer reward this. The changes were announced by Rene Ritchie, the head of the platform's editorial team. From now on, algorithms will recognise low-quality content and automatically generated content, and channels that primarily rely on such content will gradually be excluded from monetisation. Importantly – YouTube does not intend to target people commenting on current events or analysing happenings, but emphasises that the key will be originality of perspective and uniqueness of interpretation. If the material duplicates what’s already available on dozens of other channels, and the only thing that changes is the voice and the order of sentences – there’s nothing to expect.
Attempt to Save Platform Quality
Behind this decision lies much more than just a fight against clickbait. It's an attempt to save the quality of YouTube, which increasingly resembles a landfill of AI-generated content, created solely to boost reach. Google – which is, after all, developing AI tools itself – has begun to notice that without a clear boundary, the platform will start to consume its own tail. Therefore, it was decided to cut the power supply: without the ability to monetise, junk channels will likely cease to exist. Is that enough? Hard to say. But at least a signal has finally emerged that quality and creativity matter again.
