YouTube CEO Neil Mohan announced in his annual letter that artificial intelligence will become one of YouTube's four strategic priorities in 2025. This marks YouTube's increased investment in AI technology, aiming to provide creators with more tools, enhance user experience, and cope with increasingly fierce competition. The letter mentioned a number of AI-driven features, including video creative assistance, thumbnail generation, multilingual translation, and user age recognition, which will bring significant changes to creators and users. However, the use of AI technology has also sparked discussions about content quality and copyright, and YouTube has also promised to invest resources to address these potential problems.
In a recent annual letter, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan called artificial intelligence (AI) one of the company's four "major bets" in 2025. Mohan mentioned that YouTube is actively investing in creators’ AI tools, including features such as video creativity, thumbnail production and language translation.
It is worth mentioning that the translation feature will be launched this month to all creators participating in the YouTube partnership program, and another AI feature can identify users' ages to customize the right content and recommendations for them.
Over the past year, YouTube has also launched a range of features to help creators generate images and video backgrounds, while also adding options to add music to short videos.
Although the introduction of AI into the video production process has caused some controversy, some believe that AI-generated content will dilute YouTube's value and lead to a flood of inferior AI content. However, there are also opinions that AI will serve as an auxiliary tool for video production rather than a replacement for creativity.
Additionally, YouTube’s AI tools help creators expand their audience, including automatic dubbing, which allows creators to easily translate videos into multiple languages. In the letter, Mohan said the automatic dubbing feature will be open to all creators participating in the YouTube partnership program this month.
YouTube also said it would invest in detecting and controlling tools used by AI on the platform. This includes an expansion of a pilot project in partnership with Creative Artist Agency (CAA) to give more people access to technologies that recognize and manage AI-generated content, especially content that involves their image. Last fall, YouTube announced a new set of AI detection tools designed to protect creators, including artists, actors, musicians and athletes, from their images (such as faces and sounds) being copied and used in other videos. YouTube says existing content recognition systems will be extended to detect simulated faces or sounds generated through AI tools.
Mohan also mentioned that this year YouTube will deploy machine learning technology to estimate users’ ages so as to better present content and recommendations that suit them. However, he did not disclose how the technology will determine the age of the user and what measures will be taken if the AI judges wrongly. In fact, social media services such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have long been using age verification technology.
Aside from AI, Mohan mentioned that YouTube’s other major bets in 2025 include building YouTube into the center of culture (a location that may have been replaced by TikTok), viewing YouTube as the new Hollywood, and emphasizing YouTube on TV The importance of the latter, which has surpassed mobile devices in the United States to become the primary device for watching YouTube.
Key points:
YouTube CEO sees AI as an important strategy for the company in 2025, launching a number of creator AI tools.
The new automatic dubbing feature will help creators easily translate videos and is expected to be fully launched this month.
YouTube will use machine learning technology to estimate user age to provide more personalized content recommendations.
In short, YouTube's strategic investment in artificial intelligence demonstrates its determination to develop in the future, but it also needs to actively respond to the challenges brought by AI technology to ensure the healthy and sustainable development of the platform. In the future, AI will play an increasingly important role in YouTube content creation and user experience.