YouTube recently announced a new feature that allows creators to choose whether to permit third-party companies to use their videos for training artificial intelligence (AI) models.
The default setting for this option is off, meaning that if creators do not want third-party companies to scrape their videos for AI training, they do not need to take any action. However, if creators wish to allow this, YouTube will provide a clear option.
A member of the YouTube team, Rob, stated in a support post: “We see this as an important first step in supporting creators and helping them realize new value for their YouTube content in the age of AI.” He also mentioned that YouTube will continue to explore new ways to facilitate collaboration between creators and third-party companies, including options for granting access to content.
This setting will be gradually rolled out to YouTube Studio in the coming days, and unauthorized scraping will still be prohibited. According to another support page, creators can choose which companies from a list of third-party companies are allowed to use their videos for training, or they can opt to allow all third-party companies to do so. According to TechCrunch, the initially listed companies include: AI21Labs, Adobe, Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, ByteDance, Cohere, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Perplexity, Pika Labs, Runway, Stability AI, and xAI.
YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon confirmed to The Verge the accuracy of the list of companies provided by TechCrunch. He stated that these companies were selected because they are building generative AI models, and a potential collaboration with creators is quite reasonable.
This announcement comes after reports of major companies, including OpenAI, Apple, and Anthropic, using content and datasets scraped from YouTube for AI model training. Google itself has been using YouTube data to help train its AI tools. When the company announced this feature was in development in September, it stated: “As we have done for years, we use content uploaded to YouTube to improve the product experience for creators and viewers on YouTube and Google, including through machine learning and AI applications.” They emphasized that this practice is consistent with the terms agreed upon with creators.
Key Points:
🔹 YouTube launches a new feature allowing creators to choose whether to permit third-party companies to use their videos for AI training.
🔹 The default setting is off, and creators must actively choose to allow usage.
🔹 Allowed third-party companies include several well-known AI firms, such as OpenAI, Apple, and Microsoft.
