YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without warning or permission

"No GenAI, no upscaling. We're running an experiment on select YouTube Shorts that uses traditional machine learning technology to unblur, denoise, and improve clarity in videos during processing (similar to what a modern smartphone does when you record a video)"

https://x.com/youtubeinsider/status/1958199532363317467?s=46

Considering how aggressive YouTube is with video compression anyways (which smooths your face and makes it blocky), this doesn't seem like a big deal. Maybe it overprocesses in some cases, but it's also an "experiment" they're testing on only a fraction of videos.

I watched the comparisons from the first video and the only difference I see is in resolution -- he compares the guitar video uploaded to YT vs IG, and the YT one is sharper. But for all we know the IG one is lower resolution, that's all it looks like to me.

Secret experiments are never meant to be little one-offs, they're always carried out with the goal of executing a larger vision. If they cared about user input, they'd make this a configurable setting.

The idea of it being "without consent" is absurd. Your phone doesn't ask you for consent to apply smoothing to the Bayer filter, or denoising to your zoom. Sites don't ask you for consent to recompress your video.

This is just computational image processing. Phones have been doing this stuff for many years now.

This isn't adding new elements to a video. It's not adding body parts or changing people's words or inventing backgrounds or anything.

And "experiments" are just A/B testing. If it increases engagement, they roll it out more broadly. If it doesn't, they get rid of it.