YouTube's Goal in 2026 is to reinvent entertainment... and managing AI slop
It's that time of the year again for YouTube to provide us their goal for the year. And here are the four things they're focusing on:
- Reinventing entertainment
- Building the best place for kids & teens
- Powering the creator economy
- Supercharging & safeguarding creativity with AI
If you're unaware, for almost 3 years, YouTube is #1 in streaming watchtime according to Nielsen. Analog TV have their eyes on YouTube because of the transition from TV to YouTube.
Shorts now averages 200 billion daily views!
If you're still against toward Shorts, you're missing out on a big opportunity to connect to a bigger crowd. Don't restrict yourself on one format.
YouTube has several different types of content: long-form, Shorts, music videos, livestreams, podcasts, and more.
Later in the year, YouTube's planning on bringing more variety to Shorts by integrating different formats like image posting directly into the feed.
Here are a few more amazing stats YouTube dropped in their article:
- In 2024, YouTube's ecosystem contributed $55 billion to GDP and supported more than 490,000 full-time jobs
- On average, more than 1M channels used YT's AI creation tools daily in December
- Over 500,000 creators are using YouTube Shopping
- A 2025 Oxford Economics survey says that 79% of U.S. teachers who use YouTube agrees it helps students learn
YouTube's solution to managing AI slop is to... build upon their system.
This is taken directly from the article:
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To reduce the spread of low quality AI content, weβre actively building on our established systems that have been very successful in combatting spam and clickbait, and reducing the spread of low quality, repetitive content.
This leaves a lot to the imagination.
YouTube's current system uses AI to detect content, so it's like fighting fire with fire. However, their AI isn't perfect and AI slop can fall through the cracks or creator's content can get falsely flagged.
We'll have to see what their building and whether it actually manages AI slop effectively or not.
YouTube's going to be doing AI Avatars for your Shorts.
This announcement has already gotten backlash from creators and viewers, especially those who hate the idea of AI influencers.
According to YouTube:
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This year you'll be able to create a Short using your own likeness[...]
This isn't new to YouTube, considering you'd need to give your likeness if you want to be protected on YouTube from anyone using your likeness via AI-generated content.
And if you've already done that... then YouTube figures you might as well use it to create Shorts.
Unfortunately, using other people's likeness to create AI-generated content have been a problem ever since deepfakes.
There has been a recent "prank" where influencers use random people's likeness and generating videos of them doing something they haven't done.
βTikTok has officially been sold to the US.
The deal's been done, and TikTok is now owned by a consortium of US investors such as Oracle.
We're not sure how the algorithm will change in TikTok, but we highly recommend you read their newest terms of service and decide whether you're fine with it or not.
Stay creative,
Ike
βCo-Founder, Kan Do Creator Community |
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