YouTube shuts down “true crime” channel that was all AI lies

YouTube has been extremely bullish on generative AI for over a year now–but even as it’s introduced generative tools, encouraged creators to make gen AI a core part of their production pipeline, and (with parent Google) talked up AI as an essential part of humanity’s future, it’s also exhibited at least a little caution about what gen AI can produce. It’s added rules allowing people to request takedowns of videos that include “realistic” recreations of their faces and voices, and is also working with Creative Artists Agency and other entities to preemptively protect celebrities from deepfakes.

As with most things concerning AI, YouTube’s rules around it are developing in real-time, with situations being judged on a case-by-case basis.

And a recent situation appears to have highlighted one of its no-go zones for creators using gen AI to make content: YouTube terminated a channel called True Crime Case Files whose owner said he was making fake crime videos to “overdose the viewer on luridness.”

He had uploaded over 150 videos, all of them using ChatGPT, gen AI image creators, and AI voiceovers. But it was a video called Husband’s Secret Gay Love Affair with Step Son Ends in Grisly Murder that would end up getting his channel deleted.

As 404 Media reports, the 26-minute “true crime” video covered a heinous crime that supposedly took place in Littleton, Colorado, a town with around 45,000 people. Elizabeth Hernandez, a reporter for the nearby Denver Post, found out about the video when people began contacting her newsroom, asking for more information about the murder.

“Some people in fact were saying, ‘Why didn’t The Denver Post cover this?’” Hernandez told 404 Media. “Because in the video, it makes it sound like it was a big news event and yet, when you Google it, there is no coverage.”

There was no news coverage because the murder wasn’t real. Nothing said in the video was true; the channel owner had made it all up, with the help of ChatGPT. But he didn’t disclose anywhere on the channel that the stories were false, nor that AI had been used to create supposed images of killers and victims, parents and children.

“It needs to be called ‘true crime,’ because true crime is a genre,” he told 404 Media. (His identity was not reported because he has apparently been receiving death threats.) “I wanted [the audience] to think about why […] they care so much that it was true, why it matters so much to them that real people are being murdered.”

His explanation did not fly with YouTube. True Crime Case Files’ other videos had stories just as clickbaity as Husband’s Secret Gay Love Affair with Step Son Ends in Grisly Murder. Some involved kids, and had storylines tied to political hot topics. In one, a child was sold to a local sheriff as a sex slave; in another, transgender teachers slept with their students and killed to cover it up.

And those storylines were the reason YouTube ended up deleting his channel.

“We terminated the channel in question for multiple violations of our Community Guidelines, including our policies covering child safety that prohibit the sexualization of minors,” YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon said.

There’s no telling how much money the channel owner made from these videos before YouTube caught up to him. The video that caught Hernandez’s attention had around 2 million views, and was monetizeed. The channel owner described it as a “gold rush” when he realized true crime would get views–especially if he chose to hide the fact that it was all fake.

Unfortunately, True Crime Case Files is likely far from the only fake content channel capitalizing on both the gen AI slop era and audiences’ continuing fascination with grisly crimes. But whether this situation will make YouTube more proactive in targeting and removing these channels remains to be seen.