AI on YouTube: Hollywood studios don't block fake trailers, they profit from them
Kyiv • UNN
Hollywood studios profit from AI-generated fake trailers instead of blocking them. They earn advertising revenue from these videos, even though it violates copyright.
Fake AI-generated trailers have flooded YouTube, and Hollywood studios seem to be not only not opposing it but also profiting from it. Instead of blocking videos for copyright infringement, some film studios are demanding that YouTube transfer advertising revenue from these videos to them. This is reported by Deadline, writes UNN.
Details
Fake trailers are a new wave of content on YouTube that combines footage from official videos with generated images, creating the illusion of real movie announcements. Some of them mislead viewers, and YouTube algorithms promote them higher than official trailers.
According to Deadline, instead of enforcing copyright on counterfeit ads, several Hollywood studios are asking YouTube to ensure that ad revenue generated from views goes to their benefit.
The most popular channels, like Screen Culture, use AI to create increasingly realistic fake trailers, including well-known franchises such as "Mission: Impossible" and "Fantastic Four." These videos often garner millions of views and generate significant advertising revenue. But even when studios ask YouTube to monetize such videos for their benefit, questions arise regarding the protection of intellectual property and the rights of actors who appear in the films used in such trailers.
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People have been posting fake trailers since YouTube's inception in 2005. One of the earliest examples to go viral was an imagined sequel to "Titanic," in which Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack Dawson is found in a block of ice under the ocean and brought back to life in modern-day New York — all set to an upbeat dance remix of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." The trailer was updated in 2018 by VJ4rawr2, an Australian YouTube blogger credited as one of the first creators of so-called concept trailers. "Titanic 2: Jack Is Back" garnered 53 million views before VJ4rawr2's original video was blocked by 20th Century Fox.
Fake trailers on YouTube are not a new phenomenon, but they are becoming more numerous and more sophisticated. At the same time, trailers have become an increasingly important part of the film marketing machine, with studios touting record views in the hope that this will translate into movie ticket sales or subscriptions. At least publicly, studios seem to be responding with a collective shrug to what some consider AI garbage on YouTube, despite CEOs like Bob Iger speaking out about the need to protect intellectual property and respect talent.