YouTube Kills Channels Creating Fake AI Movie Trailers

Earlier this year, it was reported YouTube was very much aware its platform was plagued by fake movie trailers, often for films that didn’t have actual trailers of their own. Created or marketed with generative AI, these have made looking for trailers such a pain, and now that’s thankfully a bit less painful.

Per Deadline, YouTube shut down Screen Culture and KH Studio, two of the worst offenders of this trend the outlet previously reported on. Both channels are connected to Screen Culture and have previously made “trailers” for films like Fantastic Four: First Steps and Superman, or popular TV shows like Squid Games. Together, their content had over 2 million subscribers and over a billion views. Go to the individual pages for either, and it’ll say: “This page isn’t available. Sorry about that. Try searching for something else.”

After Deadline first investigated Screen Culture and KH, YouTube began cracking down on both by suspending them from the partner program and eventually paused ads on their videos. The reason for the stopped monetization was their letting major studios like Disney take a cut of their revenue, violating the platform’s rules.

In the months since then, Disney’s been talking out of both sides of its mouth re: generative AI. Last week, it hit Google with a cease-and-desist, claiming the tech company’s AI services infringed on several copyrights—a letter that came just after Disney announced a three-year licensing deal and $1 billion investment into OpenAI to bring over 200 of its characters to ChatGPT and the Sora video platform. So instead of genAI junk infecting YouTube and the movies you like, it’ll soon be hitting Disney+, the platform you or someone you know pays for…hooray.

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