Is that YouTube video clip you’re watching real or was it made with AI?

YouTube wants to make it easier for viewers to know when content on its platform is AI-generated. In 2024, it started labeling content when creators disclosed they have used AI tools. Now YouTube is making AI-generated content labels more prominent for viewers — and it’s going to start automatically applying the labels if it detects that a video includes “significant photorealistic AI use.”

“We’ve heard consistently from our community that they value transparency when it comes to generative AI content,” YouTube said in a blog post Wednesday announcing the updates. “These changes are designed to balance transparency with creator control.”

Under YouTube’s guidelines, creators will still be required to manually disclose when they use realistic AI. But starting this week, it also will roll out a new internal system to help identify AI-generated content. “If a creator doesn’t specify whether or not they used AI, but our systems detect significant photorealistic AI use, we will now automatically apply a label,” YouTube said.

YouTube creators who believe their content was incorrectly flagged as AI-generated can modify the disclosure status using the YouTube Studio tool. However, according to YouTube, the AI labels will “remain permanent” in some cases, including for content created using YouTube’s own AI tools (such as Veo or Dream Screen) and for content that contains C2PA metadata (based on standards from the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) that indicates it was fully AI-generated.

In addition, YouTube is moving the disclosure label for photorealistic and meaningfully AI-altered or AI-generated content to a more prominent position. Until now, YouTube labeled AI content in a video’s expanded description. Going forward, for long-form videos, the AI label will now appear directly below the video player and above the description. For YouTube Shorts, the label will appear as an overlay on the video itself.

YouTube released images showing where the new labels will appear:

“The goal here is context at a glance. If it looks real but was made with AI, viewers will know immediately,” Rene Ritchie, YouTube head of editorial and creator liaison, says in a video about the changes. He added that the AI labels alone “do not affect how our videos are recommended or whether they can earn money. This is purely about giving viewers the right information at the right time.”

Meanwhile, for content that YouTube determines is “unrealistic, animated or slightly altered” (but not fully AI-generated), disclosures will continue to appear in the expanded description section.

The updates come after YouTube earlier this month expanded its likeness-detection program to all creators (18 and older). That’s designed to help users “detect and manage how AI is used to depict you on YouTube.” For creators who enroll in the program, YouTube’s systems will identify videos that may be altered or synthetic uses of their facial likeness; they can then request removal of “unauthorized content that uses your likeness directly in YouTube Studio.”