philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Hollywood studios can’t make money from AI-powered fake movie trailers on YouTube anymore

If you've ever visited YouTube and clicked on a trailer for the next superhero film and thought it seemed too good to be true, well, you might have been right. Wishful thinking, clever editing, and a scoop of AI fakery produced clips enticing billions of clicks and earning plenty of cash through advertising. The shocking part is that a lot of that money apparently found its way to the very studios you might expect to try and shut down any such unauthorized use of their intellectual property, at least according to information uncovered recently by Deadline.

That sidehustle may now be over with YouTube removing two of the biggest homes of these AI-laced fake trailers, Screen Culture and KH Studio, from its Partner Program. That means no more ad revenue for them or the studios reportedly getting a piece of the action.

Screen Culture has made many popular trailers full of AI-generated shots for upcoming films like The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Superman. KH Studio is more famous for its imaginary casting, like Leonardo DiCaprio in the next Squid Game or Henry Cavill as the next James Bond. You would be forgiven for assuming the plotlines, characters, and visuals on display were teasing details of the films, but they were produced far from the real film development. ...

YouTube is somewhat stuck as fan-made trailers have long been a popular kind of content. Using AI, though, can make a fake trailer seem good enough to trick people, even if only by accident. And YouTube doesn't want to encourage the practice by monetizing it. ...

See the full story here: https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/hollywood-studios-cant-make-money-from-ai-powered-fake-movie-trailers-on-youtube-anymore