YouTube on Monday announced it will give creators more choice over how third parties can use their content to train their AI models. Starting today, creators and rights holders will be able to flag for YouTube if they’re permitting specific third-party AI companies to train models on the creator’s content.
From a new setting within the creator dashboard, YouTube Studio, creators will be able to opt into this new feature, if they choose. Here, they’ll see a list of 18 companies they can select as having authorization to train on the creator’s videos.
The companies on the initial list include AI21 Labs, Adobe, Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, ByteDance, Cohere, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Perplexity, Pika Labs, Runway, Stability AI, and xAI. YouTube notes these companies were chosen because they’re building generative AI models and are likely sensible choices for a partnership with creators. However, creators will also be able to select a setting that says “All third-party companies” which means they’re letting any third-party train on their data — even if they’re not listed.
Eligible creators are those with access to the YouTube Studio Content Manager with an administrator role, the company also notes. They’ll also be able to view or change their third-party training settings within their YouTube Channel settings at any time.
Following the rise of AI technology, and particularly AI video like OpenAI’s Sora, YouTube creators complained that companies like Apple, Nvidia, Anthropic, OpenAI, and even Google itself, among others, have trained AI models on their material without their consent or compensation. YouTube this fall said it would address this issue in the near future.
But while the setting’s addition controls access by third parties, the company tells TechCrunch that Google will continue to train its own AI models on some YouTube content in accordance with its existing agreement with creators. The new setting also doesn’t otherwise change YouTube’s Terms of Service which prohibits third parties from accessing creator content in unauthorized ways, like scraping, for example.
Instead, YouTube sees this feature as the first step towards making it easier for creators who want to permit companies to train AI on their videos, and perh …