Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without warning or permission

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 292 posts

Re: YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without warning or permission

#3

Post by fcpguru »

jszymborski wrote: post #2

So I feel like article doesn't address the "why" of it all. Why auto AI upscale?

Boost visual quality, which improve viewer retention. So, money. I've tried many times to get a short with retention > 90% that is, 90% of viewers watch all the way to end. That's the key to going super viral. Very hard to do. I've had many shorts get around 75% and about 1k views but then die. Maybe I need some AI!

Re: YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without warning or permission

#5

Post by avasan »

pier25 wrote: post #4
jszymborski wrote: post #2

So I feel like article doesn't address the "why" of it all. Why auto AI upscale?

Probably to reduce storage costs

But the upscaling isn't applied live/on viewing, right? The video being upscaled is still stored on their server and then streamed. How does it reduce storage costs?

Re: YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without warning or permission

#6

Post by avasan »

fcpguru wrote: post #3
jszymborski wrote: post #2

So I feel like article doesn't address the "why" of it all. Why auto AI upscale?

Boost visual quality, which improve viewer retention. So, money. I've tried many times to get a short with retention > 90% that is, 90% of viewers watch all the way to end. That's the key to going super viral. Very hard to do. I've had many shorts get around 75% and about 1k views but then die. Maybe I need some AI!

Is the visual quality really boosted? It seems to give a very distinctive, almost uncanny-valley look to the video.

Re: YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without warning or permission

#7

Post by pier25 »

avasan wrote: post #5
pier25 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably to reduce storage costs

But the upscaling isn't applied live/on viewing, right? The video being upscaled is still stored on their server and then streamed. How does it reduce storage costs?

Do you know that for a fact?

Maybe Google has done the math and realized it's cheaper to upscale in realtime than store videos at high resolution forever. Wouldn't surprise me considering the number of shorts is probably growing exponentially.

Re: YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without warning or permission

#8

Post by lolc »

> "You know, YouTube is constantly working on new tools and experimenting with stuff," Beato says. "They're a best-in-class company, I've got nothing but good things to say. YouTube changed my life."

My despondent brain auto-translated that to: "My livelihood depends on Youtube"

Re: YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without warning or permission

#9

Post by mcv »

I've noticed this for a while, when I accidentally click on YouTube Shorts. (I want to avoid it, because it's brain rot, but YouTube keeps enabling it and pushes it hard in notifications).

It's most glaringly obvious in TV shows. Scenes from The Big Bang Theory look like someone clumsily tries to paint over the scenes with oil paint. It's as if the actors are wearing an inch thick layer of poorly applied makeup.

It's far less glaring in Rick Beato's videos, but it's there if you pay attention. Jill Bearup wanted to see how bad it could get and reuploaded the "enhanced" videos a hundred times over until it became a horrifying mess of artifacts.

The question remains why YouTube would do this, and the only answers I can come up with are "because they can" and "they want to brainwash us into accepting uncanny valley AI slop as real".

Re: YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without warning or permission

#10

Post by freilanzer »

mcv wrote: post #9

I've noticed this for a while, when I accidentally click on YouTube Shorts. (I want to avoid it, because it's brain rot, but YouTube keeps enabling it and pushes it hard in notifications). It's most glaringly obvious in TV shows. Scenes from The Big Bang Theory look like someone clumsily tries to paint over the scenes with oil paint. It's as if the actors are wearing an inch thick layer of poorly applied makeup. It's…

> It's most glaringly obvious in TV shows. Scenes from The Big Bang Theory look like someone clumsily tries to paint over the scenes with oil paint. It's as if the actors are wearing an inch thick layer of poorly applied makeup.

This might be the uploaders doing to avoid copyright strikes.

Post reply on HN