Speaker 2
Nice to be with you. Instead of welcome. Thanks for having me. I'm here in one of the many, many giant spaces you guys are in in New
Speaker 1
York City. Yeah, welcome. Where you are in the venue where we're going to be having our mate on YouTube.
Speaker 2
Right. So we're recording this on Tuesday. On Wednesday, you guys have a big event. It's aimed at creators. You will have announced a bunch of AI tools that are gonna help creators make better stuff, right? Why is it important for one, YouTube to have a bunch of tools for creators and two, why is it important that they're AI? Well,
Speaker 1
the first is really just what YouTube is all about, which is, you know, you walk the halls of YouTube, you're gonna hear the word creators, you know, a hundred times a day. We should just call them YouTubers. We call them YouTubers. call themselves YouTubers. We're very proud of what they do. And the analogy I like to use that will sort of give you an insight into how I think about your question is, at YouTube, our job is to build the stage. But the people on the stage. You've used this analogy before. I like it because it really does consistently hold true. But they're the ones who are on the stage. And so every tool, every feature, all of these new products that we're excited about rolling out tomorrow are really to allow creators to do what they do best. And the AI part of it, in my view, is really just an enabler. It really is analogous to technology innovation in general. So like, for example, you know, DreamScreen, which will be one of the products we announced, is really about providing a toolkit to creators to help them do what they do best or help them do what they do faster or come up with a creative idea and turn it into reality. And so really more along the lines of a tool. And so that's why the AI piece is important is it allows for a whole new class of creator tools.
Speaker 2
As a YouTube viewer, will I know that this thing was made with AI? Should I care that this thing was made with AI? We do
Speaker 1
have a policy that says that if you've uploaded a piece of content, video to YouTube, and it's been manipulated, call it AI, call it just some form of technical manipulation in a realistic way where a normal user, viewer, you or I couldn't tell the difference, then it should be labeled. And that's been about out for now for a few months. Creators are expected to do it. We have the label kind of right in the metadata. But that's for those use cases where you really are trying to replicate some reality that hadn't happened. But remember, Peter, people use technological tools in their videos, in their audio all the time. And so where does that stop and where does sort of AI pick up? That's a pretty blurry line. And so on the whole, I think we as viewers are going to be a bit indifferent to that and really going to focus more on, you know, who the creator is. It's Peter's podcast. That's what people want to hear. It's XYZ's, you know, YouTube video.
Speaker 2
Right. And they shouldn't know or shouldn't care whether we used an AI tool to do some of the editing. If it's about the creator that they're looking to connect with, yes. So we've been talking broadly in pop culture about AI for the last couple years. There's the, there's sort of two camps, right? And often people are in both camps at the same time. One is these new tools, this new technology is going to allow people to do better stuff, cooler stuff, faster stuff, cheaper stuff. And the other is this is going to just create a bunch of terrible outcomes. Lots of unintended consequences. People in the creative community are constantly worried about AI taking their jobs. I think about a lot about just for you guys, what it's like to have people who can now create any kind of media at almost zero cost, sort of an infinite amount of media. I think about what it means for you guys to deal with people uploading an infinite amount of content onto your site that you've got to evaluate, sort, toss some of the stuff out, figure out how to promote some of it to me. I've been asking you about it for a couple years. You seem to be at least outwardly confident slash blase about this. Why are you not concerned about just an ocean of mediocre or worse stuff swamping YouTube? I would say
Speaker 1
that there's a couple of things that, at least in my experience, hold true Anytime there are these sorts of big technological innovations. The first is that there is no doubt that there are...that these technologies bring disruption. And I don't want to underplay that in any way. They're gonna be disruptive to the creative process in many ways that I think will ultimately be beneficial, but they will be disruptive to that process. They will impact certainly people that are in the creative industry in many ways, obviously. Put some people out of work. There are many aspects of that sort of creative process, creation journey that will be impacted. So I do acknowledge that. I think that that's going to be something that we will see. I think it's frankly early days to see how all of that's playing out, even though you're right. We've been talking about this for the last two years. But there's another thing that I also think is really true in these sorts of big paradigm shifts. And that's we all as viewers, consumers of the content, people who watch the content, listen to it, are most interested in other human stories. And I don't believe that AI is going to change that. And that's why I I believe that everything that we talk about with respect to AI is in the construct of it being a tool as opposed to a replacement. And so, because at the end of the day, there's going to be a creator or creative person that's in the loop, that's actually creating the stories, the fandom, all of those things that viewers come to YouTube and other platforms on a regular basis for.
Speaker 2
Nat Hulme What about like the middle ground? I just imagine someone in a basement in Ohio or a content farm in Vietnam just saying, instead of uploading one of these videos to YouTube, I'm going to do a thousand iterations of them, playing around with fonts and different edits. And even if I'm not trying to be deceitful or disruptive, I'm not making objectionable content, I'm just gonna put out an infinite amount of iterations of this and we'll see which one does better. Isn't that a cost for you? Isn't that a burden for you guys to deal with that? It will be
Speaker 1
our burden to deal with as a platform, but it shouldn't be the user's burden or the viewer's burden. And what should rise to the top, just like it does today on YouTube, is quality content, content that people are interested in consuming and watching and sharing with their friends. And I expect that to be true. It has been true since the beginning of YouTube, and I expect that to be true even in this AI world that we're going
Speaker 2
into. Have you guys seen an uptick in velocity and the number of videos being uploaded? Can you see that people are using AI, the scenario that I spelled out is actually happening where people are producing just lots and lots of more stuff?
Speaker 1
You're obviously very familiar with YouTube for a long time. First of all, lots of content is uploaded to YouTube every single minute of every single day and lots of people have tried to upload content that would aim to abuse the system, those types of things. We have robust safeguards against that that continue to get better every single week, every single month. And I haven't seen a material change in a way that sort of impacts the platform. You don't see a bump in where our uploads per minute just took
