How much AI dross are you seeing in your Youtube feed?

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Krakshotz@reddit

Shorts are mostly AI. The recurring full-length videos that I’ve seen that are most likely AI all seem to be the same concept.

A white background with a list of related topics and the voiceover works their way through them one by one

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I think it depends what your feed is like, and what you count as AI. My shorts feed is mostly cat videos (AI voiceovers, genuine video, they all rip off each other so you see a lot of the same clips). DIY stuff. Factories making things. There do seem to be a lot of strange 3d mechanism animations about which I guess are AI. But mostly the footage is real but the voices and subtitles are AI. Sometimes I see stuff that is definitely genuine but the comments all scream "Fake, AI!!". Like for instance there was a period where I was getting loads of truck videos from African countries, people somehow couldn't believe that they drive normal trucks on roads that are basically 100% mud slides.

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quicksilverjack@reddit

Pretty minimal tbh, same with my insta reels.

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Proper_North_5382@reddit

Some thumbnails are AI generated and I'm sure I'm watching one channel that uses AI images to tell their "stories" but that's about it.

One channel I used to watch definitely sounded like it was AI written and narrated, it just always felt off to me and very AI like.

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T_raltixx@reddit

None. On Instagram, Facebook etc. Too much.

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humanityisdyingfast@reddit

Only if I’m feeling really brain dead and mindlessly scrolling Shorts. Don’t see them on the main feed. Instagram is FULL of AI though it’s ridiculous

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dreadwitch@reddit

So much I don't use it anymore.

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Asuperniceguy2@reddit

0? Never? I just see things from channels I'm subscribed to?

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bekcy@reddit

Can I just say, this is why I've been watching creators like Michael Geardley. He's just a real dude walking and lecturing about stuff. I'm so fed up of getting 2 minutes into a video essay to realise it's all AI slop.

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Poison_Regal31@reddit

Hardly any on YouTube. I do see some on social media mainly because others insist on sharing it or some are now making it their personality.

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Bifanarama@reddit

Way too much. Probably cos my wife watches loads of them, and YT have worked out the connection between our 2 accounts. Drives me crazy.

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eric-artman@reddit

Beat the system. Forget shitty app, use pc with filters… be happy

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beant64@reddit

One every 10 videos at least

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BollockOff@reddit

I have none for me in my recommended feed but when searching for kids content for my niece there is so much terrible AI slop. Just today she was watching some sort of Bluey slop where instead of panting one of the characters was saying “panting, panting, panting” because it was generated so badly.

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SamVimesBootTheory@reddit

Not too often but I do sometimes get the crappy AI voiceover ones where they've 'stolen' someone else's voice pop up in my shorts feeds usually art related videos.

Like there's an art youtuber I watch called Super Rae Dizzle and I've seen it happen with her voice a few times.

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sjw_7@reddit

YouTube isn't a reliable source of film trailers anymore. Far too much AI stuff there that unfortunately is starting to look better so it can be difficult at first to spot they are fake.

More history documentaries are appearing too. Some of these make it very clear that they were made with AI and I have no problem with that because they are upfront about it. These can be quite good.

But there are more that pretend they are real and a noticeable set recently are being presented by an AI David Attenborough but its clearly not him and as far as I am aware he has not agreed to being used. These should not be there.

YouTube really needs to do more to get rid of fake stuff and ones that use avatars of people without their agreement.

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sweatypissflap@reddit

too much

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Jasboh@reddit

I listen to music mix videos, loads of AI on there.

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TheVentiLebowski@reddit

On Monday night, I saw AI "footage" of Woodstock featuring people who weren't there.

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MrPejorative@reddit

None. I block anything in the youtube URL with "shorts", and I just delete anything in my history that's click bait. It's showing because you watch nostalgia or click bait adjacent stuff.

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JudasBC@reddit

Shorts? All the time. Normal videos hardly at all, tend to stick to what I am subscribed to.

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h00dman@reddit

I get a lot of those shorts "videos" which are actually just a screenshot with some AI generated text "facts", which are designed to be deliberately wrong to encourage engagement from people correcting it.

That's about it.

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daddywookie@reddit

Similar to my experience. Shorts can get full of shitty reprocessed videos. If I see every single pore and wrinkle on the actors face, or hear the same three songs, I move on real quick.

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doctorgibson@reddit

If I can hear the original video over the added music, it's not loud enough

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Charming-Objective14@reddit

Haven't seen any but I don't watch shorts so that might have something to do with it.

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veryblocky@reddit

Not that many, occasionally I’ll get a video recommended that I’ll click on, but click off immediately after realising it’s just 100% AI.

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AEHBlandalorian@reddit

I seem to get recommended the same slop with fake thumbnails of Ricky Gervais sat next to badly photoshopped/AI generated celebrities with titles like “10 times Ricky Gervais BRUTALITY DESTROYED these WOKE celebrities!” or similar.

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20127010603170562316@reddit (OP)

Watch as this redditor BRUTALLY ROASTS your comment:

Yeah, the hyperbolic capitlisation of video titles puts me off too.

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spectrumero@reddit

I'm getting some including the ones you mention. It's really turned me off from trying videos suggested by YouTube - I discovered many good channels from what YouTube suggested in the past, but now I'm just sticking to channels I subscribed to or things recommended to me by friends. It's annoying because it closes off a way of discovering interesting content because the trouble is if you click on one of them, even if you stop watching it fairly quickly, it just keeps on suggesting more and more of them poisoning your feed with them.

I'm hoping if I can avoid them long enough they will go away.

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Kvark33@reddit

Too much, Youtube used to be amazing 10 years ago, now there is too much content and a lot is AI produced.

I've also been trying to search for old videos 15+ years ago and after scrolling about a page of videos it just starts recommending me videos that have no relation to the search criteria

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GeordieAl@reddit

Hardly any on YouTube (shit loads on Facebook), I just see lots of content for the channels I’ve subscribed to and related content.

Weird thing in the past few days though, I’ve had suggested videos from creators who I’ve never heard of before, but each time it’s their “farewell video” that’s been posted after they’ve passed away! Or a video saying “this is my last video before I die”

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ApprehensiveRun1382@reddit

Even without AI, I feel the internet is just such a fake place now.

Adverts disguised as news stories.

Adverts disguised as product reviews.

Adverts disguised as damn porn, lol.

Propaganda machines disguised as social media.

I’m finding it harder and harder to take anything online seriously.

The internet back in the 90-00’s might have been a bit primitive, but it was so much more genuine.

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Gary_James_Official@reddit

People who were online in the 80s and 90s tended to be much smarter than the average human (before the floodgates were opened, and everyone got online), so the content which was present tended to be far more intelligent. There was a ton of academic papers available for anyone to read (unlike now, where most of it is behind a paywall), conversations weren't filled with emojis, and when you found one of the hub sites (pre-Google) indexing chunks of the internet, the links were actually useful...

The sheer number of websites nowadays means that there is almost no chance of verifying information presented in isolation - fact-checking, in general, is fucking awful these days - but it used to be that there was a sorta peer review, in people checking each others' work. Wild shit (although it definitely existed) wasn't pushed as mainstream, and you didn't have people being complete and utter assholes in the way that (post social media's arrival) we have now.

I'm not saying it was necessarily better - if there's a lot of things (books, movies, songs, magazines and comics, and whatever else) missing now, then the internet of thirty years ago had a paltry fraction of the content we have. Everything took forever, as anyone who remembers dial-up will testify to, and the amount of memory available on hard drives was pitiful.

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20127010603170562316@reddit (OP)

Ugh, my local "news" site is terrible for this.

It is basically thinly veiled adverts for very expensive properties, expensive cafes, and some crime reports (which they put behind a paywall).

It's kind of fun to view the comments, as people who pay to subscribe get a "BoS" (badge of shame as the commenters put it. They usually get roasted for paying for shit.

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DivasDayOff@reddit

Way too much. Or maybe I'm just learning to spot the signs.

The big tell for me is usually in the audio track, with pauses in odd places and it often introducing something with one pronunciation but switching to a completely different one for the rest of the segment. (e.g. "Ren-oh" suddenly becomes "Ren-alt" in a video about cars.) Then there's describing a 2.0 litre engine as "two dot zero". Most egregious examples were one that insisted on pronouncing the slash in OS/2 and one that narrated "rip off" as "R.I.P. off."🤣

There are other obvious formulas too. The "5 bad examples and 2 good ones" of a product one seems to be everywhere. And quizzes that repeat similar questions that an actual human would never have put together.

YouTube really should force creators to declare AI content and demonetise videos and channels that don't openly declare its use. I remember a few years ago they were demonetising videos where the creator didn't show their face. Whatever happened to that?

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Embarrassed_Park2212@reddit

Not much. I do like watching the AI movie ones, where they have the actor as they were when the film was made and 'meet' them as they are now. Take a picture, shake hands and walk off together. Some of them make me quite emotional, I know it's AI, maybe it's me getting older and these make me realise that. I don't know.

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Mystic_Owell@reddit

Much more people complaining about it

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polkadotska@reddit

Very few, but I tend to either watch long-form video essays, or else specific creators talking to camera, so generic "fun fact/list/nostalgia" stuff doesn't really fit what the algorithm thinks I want to see.

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Silent-Tea4500@reddit

I mostly consume YouTube through NewPipe so I don't get adverts, shorts, trending tabs or comment sections

My feed is exclusively videos from the small handful of channels I like and know produce quality content

I find the official YouTube app and website is pretty awful these days, they push shorts and unskippable adverts so goddamn hard that it's not fun or relaxing anymore

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rtrs_bastiat@reddit

Not much at all really. Almost everything AI that I see is my girlfriend sending it to me saying "is this AI?"

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DoctorOctagonapus@reddit

Basically none. I have history turned off and only watch from my subscriptions. Only time I ever saw AI was when one channel I was subbed to got hacked.

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240psam@reddit

I mainly watch history videos and I've had to start filtering for content uploaded before 2 years ago because half of the shit is a chatgpt script fed into TTS now. I don't really watch them but the entire "...to fall asleep to" world is mainly AI too.

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rtuck99@reddit

Some, I know the sort of videos you mean. There's one nostalgia channel I see popping up that is clearly aimed at gen-x uk demographic. I think it appeared because I was searching for stuff on Sheffield's Hole in the Road.

I filter out channel suggestions fairly aggressively on YT so don't see that many. I don't like them mainly because the comments section on all UK 20th century history vids of this nature is absolutely 100% toxic gammons.

Occasionally I see some that are quite interesting, there was one about Soviet WW2 railway resistance that was actually quite good until I read the comments did some digging and found factually it was complete AI hallucination.

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rtuck99@reddit

Tbh I'm still not completely certain the railway one was AI slop, it was really convincing, just like those documentaries on BBC2 you used to have after the fall of the Berlin Wall about how life was in the USSR, it had subtitled interviews with russian pensioners, decent narration, everything and the details were really compelling. But nothing outside to verify any of it was true

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Ecstatic_Food1982@reddit

Those BBC ones you had to take on trust as primary sources although the secondary stuff that came out later backed up most of it. I was a bit sceptical at the time though. I read Gulag by Anne Applebaum when it came out (at that point I was taking a Soviet history module at uni) and some of the stuff seemed a bit too convincing. Impossible to verify now, although having since been to Russia I don't have any doubts.

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rtuck99@reddit

Anne Applebaum is great. I haven't read any of her books but her commentary interviews on the current situation is absolutely incisive right now.

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Ecstatic_Food1982@reddit

Her stuff is brilliant and her contacts in Russia are excellent, better than eg Robert Service.

Part of my mild scepticism about Gulag was the 'otherness' of it: I knew about the post 1970s mental institutions and so, and the sort of stuff Beria and Yezhov used get up to, and the ridiculous attempts to integrate Gosplan with the gulag. But some of the stories just seemed way out.

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AutomaticInitiative@reddit

I think some topics are rife with it. Around COVID I used to listen to lore dump videos as I slept, but now that is fully and completely AI trash fire. I, too, am aggressive in filtering out videos, and it seems to keep most videos written or spoken by AI away.

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Sxn747Strangers@reddit

Lots.

I’ll just leave it playing some power metal and at some point it’ll be playing some AI produced power metal.

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WitShortage@reddit

Very little. Any that I do see, I "thumbs down" and "do not recommend this channel" on.

I appreciate that it's playing whack-a-mole, but those moles gotta get whacked

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Morganx27@reddit

Increasingly more so recently. Tends to be aimed at the demographic who can't see a video of London from more than 5 years ago without commenting BACK WHEN ENGLISH PEOPLE USED TO LIVE THERE. A lot of "do yer remember Oddbins? Do yer remember Threshers?" type stuff

If not that, it's videos with sub-500 views on topics I'm not even remotely interested in.

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Queeflet@reddit

I followed a channel for a week or two and listened in the background as I gamed, before I realised the whole thing was AI and I felt silly. It was a ww2 history channel, and once I started properly listening it was very obvious.

There are loads of these channels and they’re quite obvious to me now. No humans involved, AI narration, newish channels, little information about the channel or person running it, very prolific (can produce several long episodes each week which would be a huge task for a human) and the history is very repetitive and often wrong.

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lhmodeller@reddit

Those WW2 history channels were everywhere on my home page a few months ago. The first time I encountered one (before I realised it was AI) I listened for 30 minutes to a narrative about how German prisoners were treated to fish and chips on Fridays in UK POW camps, and decided how kind the British were and they would not be gassed, or shot at dawn. I must admit, like you, I was fooled for the first 20 minutes or so by it.

I've blocked and reported a lot, and over the last few weeks they seem to have dropped off. Maybe YouTube are cracking down on this. They really should - it could kill their platform if we all have to wade through AI slop before we find anything decent to watch.

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Queeflet@reddit

They really need to get a handle on it, I’m now very cynical. Most AI content is absolutely worthless.

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Enough-Ad3818@reddit

Quite a lot. My algorithm leans heavily towards historical videos and documentaries.

A lot of shorts seem to be AI slop, and are usually ridiculous in their historical accuracy. I unfortunately feed the beast by watching them to be incredulous. It's a kind of hate/enjoyment.

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spoo4brains@reddit

Pretty much none, I am very careful about what I click on in my logged in YT browser as the algorithm will pivot into all kinds of shit if you let it. If I want to watch something random, I will do it in another browser.

Clearing out your YT history can get you back to a state where you won't have that baggage influencing your feed.

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Doily_Enjoyer@reddit

I watch a lot of history content in the background while I craft. I generally just stick to history hit & the likes to avoid all the dross but my goodness does it try to invade my feed.

It seems to be worse when I watch a few things covering a specific topic or time period from non-ai sources.

I think right back in the beginning I was caught twice but clocked the voice almost instantly and blocked; the channel names and thumbnails are enough now.

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AutomaticInitiative@reddit

Channel names and thumbnails are generally enough, I agree

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lhmodeller@reddit

Same here. I watch a lot of (subscribed and genuinely good and reliable) history content, but there's so many A.I. generated history slop trying to get views. You can usually tell by the title of the video or channel. It's usually a variation of 'British Wartime Stories' and 'German POWs were astonished by their British treatment' or similar. The first time I encountered one (before I realised it was AI) I listened for 30 minutes to a narrative about how German prisoners were treated to fish and chips on Fridays, and decided how kind the British were and they would not be gassed, or shot at dawn.

I've managed to block and report a lot, seems their prevalence has diminished from a few months ago.

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Damage2Damage@reddit

I turned off recommendations years ago as soon as they gave the option to do so. I just watch channels I subscribe to

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Matrixblackhole@reddit

My youtube feed has more AI slop than my Toktok fyp these days, and that's saying something.

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dead_jester@reddit

Too much. And it gets pushed. It’s not me selecting to view.

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ajslov@reddit

removing shorts is the quickest way to remedy this unless you're seeing this as long form content? I don't have any on mine only accounts I follow and content I like comes up.

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20127010603170562316@reddit (OP)

Long form content. I've already banished shorts via an extension.

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Dark_Akarin@reddit

Very little, I don’t watch it so the algorithm does not show it to me.

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AnimeBritGuy@reddit

I keep getting ones for stories about UK retailers and how they went bust or how they survived all the economic struggles in recent times. Doesn't matter how often I click "not interested" or "don't recommend channel" it still pops up

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AvatarIII@reddit

Basically none unless I search it out. But that's possibly because the kind of things I watch on YouTube cannot easily be AI generated.

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SubZerox27@reddit

None, I am subscribed to zero channels and I don't watch YouTube videos. If I load up the app I don't even have a feed, I have a blank screen that says "Try searching to get started".

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20127010603170562316@reddit (OP)

Probably for the best.

There are some very good youtube channels out there though!

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JustStraightUpLost@reddit

I watch a lot of movie break down videos and I’ve noticed a few channels using ai that I set to not recommend.

The problem I have is it takes 20 mins of work to prompt an hour long script and voice over set up by ai. A non ai channel has spent a few hours researching and writing script, a couple hours of recording voice and any video and then a fair few hours of editing.

It’s work and should gain revenue based on that. Ai channels deserve nothing and YouTube should make sure ai channels receive as little as possible.

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Traxxas_Basher@reddit

Far too much.

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Jacks_Journey@reddit

It’s so bad now. I see it everywhere though Facebook posts by company’s are lame.

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katspike@reddit

The more worrying question is how much are children seeing?

It’s flooded with AI ‘fake science’ videos disguised as educational STEM content.

A 2023 BBC investigation revealed multiple channels in 20+ languages spreading misinformation, including claims about electricity-producing pyramids, alien conspiracies, and climate change denial.

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20127010603170562316@reddit (OP)

I grew up in the early days of the internet. Even as a young teenager I knew not to use my real name on the internet, and not to believe everything I read.

Now it seems to be put all your information out there, and everything is the truth.

It's weird.

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Di-Aiwn@reddit

What it's about ,personalising

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anchoredwunderlust@reddit

None really. I’m not on there much and ignore shorts. I mostly get advertised stuff I’ve already seen. It’s mostly video essays on 90s tv shows and games I’ve already played and political and historical long form content so…

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UKdanny08765@reddit

LOADS! and so much of it is for totally fake products. I have no idea how any of this is legal

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AndyOf77@reddit

I watch loads of stuff on YouTube on all manner of subjects and sometimes you click on a video and you can tell its narrated by AI, unless it's a video I really want to watch I just lose interest.

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CoconutBandita@reddit

I don't scroll YouTube but on Instagram there is a lot.

Lots of clearly AI accounts, with a video of an event (say a weird goal in football) and a very lengthy description of a completely different event as the caption.

Maybe it's not AI, maybe it's engagement bait or poor post management from non-English speakers, but there are so many it seems like poor quality AI slop

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mattcannon2@reddit

Not much if I steer clear of shorts.

Linkedin however is 75% slop.

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IrrelevantPiglet@reddit

Linkedin however is 75% slop.

Not much change there then.

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tharrison4815@reddit

Whenever my main feed starts going downhill I just go to the subscriptions section and watch stuff from creators that I like. Usually after a few days of that the main feed cleans up and shows better quality stuff.

Also if you ever do click on a video that turns out to be low quality go into your YouTube watch history and remove it so it doesn’t affect your algorithm.

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ashleypenny@reddit

a ton of the ads are blatant AI now

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Agitated_Ad_361@reddit

There’s only one that I’ll watch, because genuine effort has gone in. It’s a history channel that charts the changing landscape of a given city through its long history and uses AI to create the video images of the city based on photographs and paintings. Other than that, I do not engage and don’t tend to see much, just mainly only the channels I subscribe to.

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Choice-Demand-3884@reddit

I must admit I enjoy the YT channel that brings old photographic portraits 'to life' - there's a particularly good one which briefly animates a series of elderly French Napoleonic war veterans.

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20127010603170562316@reddit (OP)

I think I've seen that channel, it wasn't too bad. I think the narration and script is human done?

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Agitated_Ad_361@reddit

I think the script is human, but the voice is AI. The way they leave the ‘and’ out of numbers like the Americans do is something that they’ve not got their heads around yet and really grates on me.

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Highlandertr3@reddit

Uhh. Not too much? I skip alot and upvoter what I like so not too much.

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Available_Abrocoma26@reddit

Not mine, I don't use YT much but my partner gets loads and almost every short she shows me I have to point out that it's AI.

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cup-of-tea-76@reddit

Tons, unlike all other platforms I have managed to keep my YT algorithm healthy too and it’s mostly made up of sports, history and science

With regards to history and science overwhelming majority is now AI which frustrated the fuck out of me so if I’m looking for new material it normally has to be several years old

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fleshcircuits@reddit

very rarely i get recommended ai history and fact videos, but i don’t engage with anything that even has an ai looking thumbnail.

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Infamous_Tough_7320@reddit

Next to nothing on my main feed. A bit of crap on shorts which I don’t watch anyways

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20127010603170562316@reddit (OP)

I installed an extension to completely remove shorts. Pointless stuff.

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Better_Possible_7576@reddit

I have a lot of subscriptions in YouTube so that tends to keep unwanted stuff at bay. I do see a lot in news feeds usually trailers for movies, I did fall for it in the early days but they are so obvious nowadays and just ignore

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handtoglandwombat@reddit

Yes, many. YouTube sprinkles videos with no views into our suggestions to see if they take off. More and more often those videos are AI. But rest assured that you’re doing your part to make sure they stay buried.

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Dazpiece@reddit

Literally none. I subscribe to quality channels I like, I thumbs down or block the ones I don't.

I also don't watch or swipe through reels or whatever YouTube's equivalent is

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