YouTube Introduces Opt-In Feature for Third-Party AI Training of Creator Content

YouTube creators can now opt into third-party AI training

Also: Want to avoid the YouTube TV price hike? This trick worked for me (eventually) On Monday, YouTube announced that it will now allow creators and rights-holders to choose whether "third-party companies [can] use their content to train AI models directly in Studio Settings under 'Third-party training.'" The decision comes after YouTube creators complained that leading tech companies used their creative material to train AI models without their consent or compensation. Generative AI companies scrape the web or tap other data sources (sometimes licensed, sometimes not) to train models. OpenAI and Google used YouTube transcripts to train Whisper, an AI transcription tool, without the creators' explicit knowledge. Artists, designers, and publishers have expressed concerns about copyright and being paid for their work, resulting in numerous lawsuits. To deal with legal challenges, companies such as Adobe, Canva, and Stability AI have found ways to incentivize artists to contribute their work for training in exchange for additional royalties. Also: The most popular AI tools of 2024 (and what that even means) Earlier this fall, YouTube began exploring ways to address the issue when the company launched new AI-detection tools to protect creators, actors, musicians, and athletes from having their faces and voices copied and used in other videos. In the announcement, YouTube said: "When it comes to [third] parties, such as those who may try to scrape YouTube content, we've been clear that accessing creator content in unauthorized ways violates our Terms of Service and undermines the value we provide back to creators in exchange for their work." Creators can opt into the new "Third-party training" feature within the creator dashboard in YouTube Studio. Just go to YouTube Studio and select Settings on the left menu. Then go to Channel > Advanced settings. Also: How to download YouTube videos for free - 2 ways Under the Third-party training dropdown, you'll see a list of 18 companies, including Adobe, Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, ByteDance, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Perplexity, and Stability AI. They can then manually authorize specific companies to train models using their material. Creators can also select a setting that says "All third-party companies" to allow any third party to train models using their data, even if the party is not on the list. Eligible creators with an administrator role who want to monetize their channels with the YouTube Partner Program can change their third-party training settings by checking a box next to "Allow third-party companies to train AI models using my content." Also: Your Roku TV is getting a major smart home upgrade today - for free As YouTube's Help page explains, "If you're a rights holder who wants to partner with AI companies to help develop the latest Generative AI technology, you may have the option to allow third-party training. Users of YouTube Studio Content Manager with an Administrator role can choose to turn on the third-party training setting." Both regular creators and monetizable creators can change their "Third-party feature" settings at any given time. For all creators, the default setting will prevent third parties from training models on their content -- an unchecked box means third-party companies cannot train AI models using your content. YouTube did not clarify whether the new setting would impact AI training that has already occurred before the launch of this new feature. According to TechCrunch, YouTube said Google "will continue to train its own AI models on some YouTube content in accordance with its existing agreement with creators." Also: You can interview the AI hosts of your NotebookLM podcast now Over the next few days, creators globally will begin receiving alerts in banner notifications about the new feature in YouTube Studio on desktop and mobile.

YouTube will now let creators opt into third-party AI training

YouTube on Monday announced it will give creators more choice over how third parties can use their content to train their AI models. Starting today, creators and rights holders will be able to flag for YouTube if they're permitting specific third-party AI companies to train models on the creator's content. From a new setting within the creator dashboard, YouTube Studio, creators will be able to opt into this new feature, if they choose. Here, they'll see a list of 18 companies they can select as having authorization to train on the creator's videos. The companies on the initial list include AI21 Labs, Adobe, Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, ByteDance, Cohere, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Perplexity, Pika Labs, Runway, Stability AI, and xAI. YouTube notes these companies were chosen because they're building generative AI models and are likely sensible choices for a partnership with creators. However, creators will also be able to select a setting that says "All third-party companies" which means they're letting any third-party train on their data -- even if they're not listed. Eligible creators are those with access to the YouTube Studio Content Manager with an administrator role, the company also notes. They'll also be able to view or change their third-party training settings within their YouTube Channel settings at any time. Following the rise of AI technology, and particularly AI video like OpenAI's Sora, YouTube creators complained that companies like Apple, Nvidia, Anthropic, OpenAI, and even Google itself, among others, have trained AI models on their material without their consent or compensation. YouTube this fall said it would address this issue in the near future. But while the setting's addition controls access by third parties, the company tells TechCrunch that Google will continue to train its own AI models on some YouTube content in accordance with its existing agreement with creators. The new setting also doesn't otherwise change YouTube's Terms of Service which prohibits third parties from accessing creator content in unauthorized ways, like scraping, for example. Instead, YouTube sees this feature as the first step towards making it easier for creators who want to permit companies to train AI on their videos, and perhaps as a way to be compensated for that training. In the future, YouTube will likely tackle the next step of this process by allowing the companies creators have authorized to access direct downloads of their videos. With the feature's introduction, the default setting for all creators will not allow third parties to train on their videos, which makes it more explicit to companies who have already done so that they did this against the creators' wishes. YouTube was unable to say if the new setting could have any sort of retroactive impact on any third-party AI model training that has taken place. But the company says its Terms of Service indicates that third parties cannot access creator content without authorization. The company first unveiled its plans to offer creator controls for AI training in September, when it also announced new AI detection tools that aimed to help creators, artists, musicians, actors, and athletes from having their likenesses, including their faces and voices, copied and used in other videos. The detection technology would expand upon YouTube's existing Content ID system, which previously focused only on copyright-protected material, the company explained at the time. Creators globally will be alerted to the new feature via banner notifications in YouTube Studio on desktop and mobile over the next few days. Separately, Google's AI research lab DeepMind announced a new video-generating AI model, Veo 2, on Monday, which aims to rival OpenAI's Sora.

YouTube will now let creators opt out of third-party AI training | TechCrunch

YouTube on Monday announced it will give creators more choice over how third parties can use their content to train their AI models. Starting today, creators and rights holders will be able to flag for YouTube if they're permitting specific third-party AI companies to train models on the creator's content. From a new setting within the creator dashboard, YouTube Studio, creators will be able to opt into this new feature, if they choose. Here, they'll see a list of 18 companies they can select as having authorization to train on the creator's videos. The companies on the initial list include AI21 Labs, Adobe, Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, ByteDance, Cohere, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Perplexity, Pika Labs, Runway, Stability AI, and xAI. YouTube notes these companies were chosen because they're building generative AI models and are likely sensible choices for a partnership with creators. However, creators will also be able to select a setting that says "All third-party companies" which means they're letting any third-party train on their data -- even if they're not listed. Eligible creators are those with access to the YouTube Studio Content Manager with an administrator role, the company also notes. They'll also be able to view or change their third-party training settings within their YouTube Channel settings at any time. Following the rise of AI technology, and particularly AI video like OpenAI's Sora, YouTube creators complained that companies like Apple, Nvidia, Anthropic, OpenAI, and even Google itself, among others, have trained AI models on their material without their consent or compensation. YouTube this fall said it would address this issue in the near future. But while the setting's addition controls access by third parties, the company tells TechCrunch that Google will continue to train its own AI models on some YouTube content in accordance with its existing agreement with creators. The new setting also doesn't otherwise change YouTube's Terms of Service which prohibits third parties from accessing creator content in unauthorized ways, like scraping, for example. Instead, YouTube sees this feature as the first step towards making it easier for creators who want to permit companies to train AI on their videos, and perhaps as a way to be compensated for that training. In the future, YouTube will likely tackle the next step of this process by allowing the companies creators have authorized to access direct downloads of their videos. With the feature's introduction, the default setting for all creators will not allow third parties to train on their videos, which makes it more explicit to companies who have already done so that they did this against the creators' wishes. YouTube was unable to say if the new setting could have any sort of retroactive impact on any third-party AI model training that has taken place. But the company says its Terms of Service indicates that third parties cannot access creator content without authorization. The company first unveiled its plans to offer creator controls for AI training in September, when it also announced new AI detection tools that aimed to help creators, artists, musicians, actors, and athletes from having their likenesses, including their faces and voices, copied and used in other videos. The detection technology would expand upon YouTube's existing Content ID system, which previously focused only on copyright-protected material, the company explained at the time. Creators globally will be alerted to the new feature via banner notifications in YouTube Studio on desktop and mobile over the next few days.

YouTube Now Lets Creators Allow Firms to Train AI Models on Their Videos

YouTube did not mention any compensation that AI firms can offer creators YouTube announced a new update on Monday that will allow content creators on the platform more control over third-party artificial intelligence (AI) training. The move comes after the video-streaming giant introduced new tools to protect creators from deepfakes that imitate their likenesses, including their faces and voices. The new option will let content creators decide whether or not they want third-party AI firms to access their videos to train large language models (LLMs). They can also grat permission to specific AI companies, while forbidding others from using their videos. Companies are now racing to source new data to train AI models while developing LLMs. Now that publicly available data has been exhausted by these AI firms, they are looking at newer ways to find large deposits of high-quality data to train models and make them more capable. While some AI companies have taken the content-partnership route, it is generally considered expensive to source such data. Another option is synthetic data, which is created by other generative AI models. However, there is a risk that such data can be low-quality, which can negatively impact the growth of newer models. As such, companies are trying to collaborate with content creators to find new high-quality data to train AI models. For instance, Grok is currently trained on public posts on X (formerly known as Twitter), and Meta AI is trained on public posts on Facebook and Instagram. YouTube has also become a platform of interest for AI firms, given the large amount of human-created data. With the rise of video generation models, this data becomes even more valuable. However, so far the video-streaming giant has disallowed companies to crawl and scrape videos in an unauthorised way to protect creators. In a support document, the company announced a new option that will allow content creators on the platform to choose whether they want to let any AI firm access their videos to train LLMs or not. In the next few days, YouTube is planning to roll out an update that will add a new option in Studio Settings under the "Third-party training" section. There, creators can choose to allow specific AI companies to scrape their videos. The list of companies currently includes AI21 Labs, Adobe, Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, ByteDance, Cohere, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Perplexity, Pika Labs, Runway, Stability AI, and xAI. Notably, creators can also access their videos to all the AI companies by picking the relevant option. YouTube highlights that only those videos will be eligible for AI training that are allowed by the creators as well as applicable rights holders. Additionally, the company's terms of service still apply, meaning AI firms cannot illegitimately scrape videos from the platform. This new option does not include any mention of compensation from AI firms to the creators for using their videos. However, YouTube highlighted that it will continue to facilitate new forms of collaboration between creators and third-party companies.

YouTubers can now choose if their videos are used to train AI

5 things YouTube Premium needs to change to keep me as a subscriber Summary YouTube creators now have the option to control if their videos are used for AI training, a positive step forward. Users can choose if third parties can access their content for AI training through the Creator Studio settings. Despite YouTube's new feature, concerns remain about how Google may still be training its own AI using the videos. ✕ Remove Ads The importance of user-generated content has never been greater, and not just because AI-generated content coexists with it on the internet. Platforms like YouTube, Reddit, and other social media serve as hubs for original work created by people like you and me, and its use to train AI models has been a bone of contention for a couple of years now. These big platforms are finally catching up, and YouTube just added an option for creators to control the role of their videos in AI training. Related YouTube doesn't want OpenAI training Sora and ChatGPT on its videos YouTube CEO Neal Mohan has now taken a shot across the bow, issuing a warning to OpenAI Posts While on the one hand Google's Gemini AI willingly summarizes videos from YouTube, creators remain concerned that hours of their effort will be used to train AI models, with no fair compensation delivered in exchange. However, YouTube is slowly making amends, perhaps to end the year on a positive note. Following through with plans from 2024, the company just introduced an option for creators to pick whether their videos should be used by third parties for AI training, TechCrunch reports. ✕ Remove Ads In the coming days, Creator Studio for YouTube uploaders will gain a new subsection in Studio Settings, called Third-party training. Here, the original creators and rights holders can choose to offer their video to third parties for AI training. YouTube could include owners detected by Content ID as well. Detailed support documentation for the feature is available as well. The right way to use YouTube is more complex now But nothing online is truly private It's worth noting that Creator Studio's new addition only provides control of third-party access to your content for said purposes. Moreover, YouTube isn't exactly angelic in its ways, and has carefully worded its announcement. We believe that since nothing is said about first-party AI training, Google will continue coaching Gemini and other AI products using the trove of original videos on YouTube while depriving rivals of the resource. ✕ Remove Ads On the flipside, YouTube repeatedly reiterates that scraping videos isn't ethical or permitted. However, given the liberal access permitted by its APIs there's little standing between a determined AI engineer and YouTube's content base. So, a simple toggle switch in the settings sure isn't a foolproof solution to ensure precious content is handled correctly. We just hope tech companies stick to their word and develop AI sustainably because, cool as the applications may be, development is mostly self-governed while lawmakers catch up. Related Google Gemini's AI video summary implies YouTube doesn't care about content creators How much more proof do we need? Posts9 ✕ Remove Ads

YouTube will let creators choose if their videos are used for AI training - Phandroid

One of the ways companies get data to train their AIs is from the public. This includes things that you might have personally uploaded, such as photos, videos and more. Obviously the right thing to do would be to get consent, and that's something that YouTube is doing where they're asking content creators permission to use their videos for AI training. In an announcement by YouTube, the company has revealed that in the future should there be a request from third-party companies to use videos for AI training, this is something that creators will need to give their consent to. This means that companies will not be able to harvest your videos to train their AI unless you give the greenlight. That being said, this seems to be some kind of blanket agreement. It does not appear that creators need to give consent per request. There is a toggle in the Studio Settings that they have to turn on to allow "Third-party training". According to YouTube: "We see this as an important first step in supporting creators and helping them realize new value for their YouTube content in the AI era. As we gather feedback, we'll continue to explore features that facilitate new forms of collaboration between creators and third-party companies, including options for authorized methods to access content." So if you are a YouTube creator and don't want to allow third-party companies to use your videos for training purposes, then leave this toggle off. Another thing worth noting is that this only applies to third-party companies. YouTube themselves, as per their existing agreement with creators, can still use some content for training.

YouTube creators can now third-party companies train AI models on their content | TechCrunch

Google says it'll soon begin to allow YouTube creators and rightsholders to let third-party companies to use their content to train AI models. "Over the next few days, creators and rights holders can choose to allow third-party companies to use their content to train AI models directly in Studio Settings under 'Third-party training,'" Google wrote in a blog post. "To be eligible for AI training, a video must be allowed by the creator as well as the applicable rights holders." Google says it sees the update, which doesn't change its terms of service, as "an important first step informing creators and helping them realize new value for their YouTube content in the AI era." "As we gather feedback, we'll continue to explore features that facilitate new forms of collaboration between creators and third-party companies, including options for authorized methods to access content," Google said in the blog post.

YouTube is letting creators opt into allowing third-party AI training

YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon tells The Verge that TechCrunch's list is accurate. "These companies were chosen because they're building generative AI models and are likely sensible choices for a potential partnership with creators," Malon says. This announcement follows reports of AI models from big companies -- including OpenAI, Apple, and Anthropic -- being trained on content and datasets scraped from YouTube. Google itself already uses YouTube data to help train its AI tools. "As we have for many years, we use content uploaded to YouTube to improve the product experience for creators and viewers across YouTube and Google, including through machine learning and AI applications," the company said in September, when it announced this feature was in the works. "We do this consistent with the terms that creators agree to."