Hollywood studios were claiming AdSense revenue from YouTube’s deluge of AI slop. Now what?

There’s a lot of AI slop on YouTube these days. YouTube knows that–and, after all its messaging about how AI is the future of seamlessly blending human creativity with machine productivity, doesn’t seem keen to do anything to clean up.

That is, unless someone calls it out.

A recent report from Deadline dug into how two YouTube channels churning out fake AI movie trailers, Screen Culture and KH Studio, were being used to siphon money to major Hollywood studios including Warner Bros., Discovery, Paramount, and Sony Pictures.

Here’s how it worked: The channels weren’t owned by or affiliated with the studios, but they did use clips of studios’ real trailers for upcoming movies like Superman and Jurassic World: Rebirth interspersed with gobs of AI-generated content. YouTube’s Content ID system presumably flagged the channels, because using clips of real trailers (including, crucially, shots of the actors who star in those trailers) breaks copyright laws.

But instead of telling YouTube to pull the trailers down and shutter Screen Culture and KH Studio’s channels–which they would’ve been well within their rights to do–Warner Bros., Discovery, Paramount, and Sony Pictures instead allowed the videos to stay up…as long as any ad revenue the channels generated went to them instead of the channel owners.

No studio would tell Deadline why they allegedly decided to claim the videos’ AdSense instead of asking YouTube to pull them down. Though, between them, the two channels have over 2 billion views, so we’re guessing dollar signs might play a part.

However, SAG-AFTRA, which has spent years fighting studios over actors having the right to decline AI usage of their likeness in films and other forms of entertainment, told the outlet this incident was a “race to the bottom” for studios’ morality with AI.

“Just as SAG-AFTRA is aggressively bargaining contract terms and creating laws to protect and enforce our members’ voice and likeness rights, we expect our bargaining partners to aggressively enforce their IP from any, and all AI misappropriation,” the union said. “Monetizing unauthorized, unwanted, and subpar uses of human-centered IP is a race to the bottom. It incentivizes technology companies and short-term gains at the expense of lasting human creative endeavor.”

Two days after Deadline published its interview, YouTube removed Screen Culture and KH Studio from its Partner Program, demonetizing all their videos. The channels can appeal this decision, and it seems like at least one of them might plan to. As The Verge noted, KH Studio has already changed the descriptions of some videos to describe them as “concept trailers” rather than “first trailers,” making it a little more clear that these are not official studio productions.

But, if either channel comes back online, studios could claim their ad revenue again. So how far from official would they really be?