We’ve seen Google invest heavily in AI over the past few years, and it’s probably one of the more interesting companies to look at in terms of its products and services because it just has so many when compared to the competition.
While some of the additions can be extremely useful, like finding ways to filter the high-quality content you actually want to watch on YouTube, others, like its new AI avatars for Shorts, can leave users a bit more divided (via 9to5Google).
I tried YouTube’s auto-dubbing feature, and it was so surreal I thought I imagined it
Voices from beyond are a distracting, dystopian liberty
It’s unclear where this will lead
Creators will now be able to generate an AI version of themselves for use in Shorts. YouTube states that this avatar can be used to “generate videos that look and sound like you, safely and securely.” In a world where it’s becoming harder to tell what’s real and what isn’t, this is going to be a big move for YouTube.
In order to take advantage of this, users will need to be over the age of 18 and have a YouTube channel. With those requirements satisfied, creators can head into the YouTube or YouTube Create app to start the process of creating their AI avatar. YouTube shares that using “a secure “live selfie” capture process, you’ll record your face and voice to create your avatar.”
Once that’s complete, creators will be able to use a prompt to generate a scene with the avatar. To make things even more realistic, users will be able to use this avatar and add it to an existing YouTube Shorts clip. While this is new to YouTube, we’ve seen examples of this popping up with third-party tools, and it’s quite convincing.
So, it was only natural for it to become available directly. You can always give this a try, as stated before, by heading to YouTube or YouTube Create app. If you’re not really feeling any of this once you’ve gone through the process, you can have YouTube delete the avatar videos and the avatar data. There’s even a setting to limit who can use your avatar in YouTube remixes.
For now, this feature is only available for Shorts, but with enough optimizations, we can eventually see this rolling out to long-form videos as well. It’s unclear where this feature will take content creation in the future, but all we can do is sit back and watch.
