Google Has An AI That Helps Clean Up Trashy Videos On YouTube

YouTube is home to millions of videos due to the ease of uploading them to its platform where anyone can upload a video at anytime they want. However, more often than not, many of us have probably encountered instances where videos end up being clickbait or are misleading, leaving us frustrated in the process.

For those who are wondering what Google is doing to curb such videos, a recent report from Bloomberg has revealed that Google actually has an AI that runs behind-the-scenes where its job is to clean up all these so-called “trashy videos”. The company has recently confirmed the existence of the tool, where they say that they initially rolled it out as a test in 2015 but only deployed it in earnest in 2017 following incidents involving inappropriate videos surfacing on YouTube Kids.

According to a Google spokeswoman, “We started testing a clickbait classifier in 2015, which we rolled out broadly in 2016 in order to improve users’ experience. It looks for titles or thumbnails that misrepresent the content of the video or include offensive language, among other things.”

There were, of course, financial incentives to help clean up YouTube, where a better curation of videos and less trashy and clickbaity content would encourage users to keep using its platform, thus generating more ad revenue for Google and its creators.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: AI (Artificial Intelligence), Google, YouTube