What Does Ownership Mean on YouTube Now  🔗 **Source:** [What Does Ownership Mean on YouTube Now](https://share.snipd.com/episode/405e369e-649e-4818-991f-2982ed40fa13) ## Highlights - **Gemini Omni Reimagines Originals** - Gemini Omni lets creators reimagine existing Shorts by altering people, props, and scenes, not just layering commentary. - Rob showed examples where creators turned a dancer into a pirate or added a second person into another creator's short, changing the original's intent. Transcript: Rob Wilson Yeah. So it started, I think one or two years ago with Dream Screen and VR3. These were ones where you could use the YouTube Shorts app and prompt something in and it would generate it for you. But it would be something totally AI. It wouldn't be a known person or a known event. It would be generating things out of its own lovely AI mind. But that has recently changed with some announcements that were made at the recent Google I.O. Events, which I think was in May or June, as we're talking, maybe six weeks ago. And it was this bad boy here, Google AI. It's AIIO2026. And what I'm particularly interested in is this feature here, which we're going to need a bit of visual commentary for. It's called Gemini Omni for Shorts. And what this allows you to do is take an existing short, whatever is contained in that short, and then to use YouTube's vernacular, reimagine it. And the examples we're seeing on screen now is that somebody is doing some washing up and they're taking this person and then turning them into a computer game character, which, okay, That's fine. Here's another example, though, where this same creator is doing some sort of funky dance, marching along the screen, and then somebody else is reimagining that to add themselves Into this dance, then putting a head prop on the top, then turning him into pirates, so on and so forth. Like it is clear that the original premise of a video has been altered in significant ways. And you would describe these as the perfect YouTube examples where it kind of retains something from the original video and it looks pretty convincing. ([Time 0:04:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0231fd7b-6dc5-43a0-8b8f-d0059e298eb7)) - **Turn Off Shorts Remixing Per Video** - Check the Shorts Remixing setting in each video's details and disable video remixing if you don't want others to reimagine your short. - This setting is on by default and there is no channel-wide opt-out, so toggle it per upload or retroactively change past videos. Transcript: Rob Wilson And it's an existing feature that's been on YouTube for quite a while now, and it's called Shorts Remixing. I'm going to just read out how it's described in the video details of what you upload. And this is quite deep into the settings. It's not obvious. You've got to know where it is and find it. But it says Shorts Remixing. Let others create shorts using content this video. If you don't allow remixing, shorts remixed from this video will be permanently deleted. And you've got two options, allow video and audio remixing or allow only audio remixing. So to a certain extent, you have to allow your content to be remixed if it is a YouTube short. Wow. Like there's no opt out. There's no opt out, right? Okay. And here's the other, oh my goodness, I didn't realize this moment. It is turned on by default. Every video you upload has it turned on allow video and audio remixing. And the other thing about this is that there is no channel default. So you can't just set this off and forget it. You've got to remember to turn this off every single video. ([Time 0:08:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b5ee7182-31ff-416b-980e-6d2f11040aed)) - **Rob's Viral Short Got Hundreds Of Remixes** - Rob's simple viral short of him swiping and saying "yes" (millions of views) was reimagined hundreds of times into clowns, extra hands, and parrots. - He played one remix that added a clown and a third hand, labeled as AI and sounding unlike him. Transcript: Rob Wilson And what we're looking at is the original here. And it's something completely stupid. I just filmed a short that has me swiping through shorts very quickly and earning a view. Because again, YouTube did something a little weird a year ago. They changed from engaged views to just views. So like shorts creators can get a ton of views by just silliness. And this is what it sounds like and looks like. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. That is literally it. It's just me swiping on the phone saying yes, and I'm getting a view every time I do it every second. I don't know why that's gone viral. Maybe it's because it was titled How to Get More YouTube Shorts Views in 2026. Just a bit of a silly thing. But people have wanted to remix this video, reimagine it. As you can see on screen, at least 400 people have done that. Wow. Now we move on to how this has been remixed. Remember, again, the perfect example of where somebody was strutting down the street and somebody was added to it. We were added props. It looks kind of harmless. It looks kind of fun. Well, this is my version of that. I don't know. How do we comment on this? ([Time 0:12:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/11740ccc-b9b4-4454-8950-8a659d7f9a05)) - **YouTube Puts Visible AI Labels On Content** - YouTube now places visible AI labels on videos (player or title area) rather than burying them in descriptions. - Rob noted the label on his remix and said clearer AI disclosure is an improvement for viewers. Transcript: Rob Wilson First of all, it doesn't sound like me. That's really important. We'll get back to that in a second. And in the bottom corner, we have an AI label. Now, this is something good that YouTube have recently done. They used to bury their AI labels in video descriptions. Now they're putting these on top of the player, or I think it's like next to the title on long form videos. ([Time 0:14:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/97c1e691-ddb3-4c62-a5b5-28af670a4a99)) - **Terms Now Allow Feature-Enabled Modifications** - YouTube's terms grant other users a worldwide royalty-free license to access and modify your content “only as enabled by a feature of a service.” - That wording effectively permits new platform features like reimagining to alter creator likenesses without separate consent. Transcript: Rob Wilson And it's this, license to other users. You also grant each other, user of a service, a worldwide non-exclusive royalty-free license to access your content through the service to use that content, including to reproduce, Distribute, modify, display, and perform it only as enabled by a feature of a service. So I think that basically says you can use this new tool, Gemini Omni, to reimagine somebody's likeness. Right? I mean, it doesn't go into that much detail, but it's basically saying if your content is on the platform, somebody can use a feature to do something with your content. ([Time 0:25:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9115f3a7-1ab1-4e9b-ab7b-ba981fa2e8d9)) - **New Features May Bypass Change Notices** - YouTube's TOS promise to notify about material changes excludes "when we launch a new product or feature," letting Google add features without advance notice. - Rob interprets this as a loophole allowing new AI tools to be deployed without explicit creator notification. Transcript: Rob Wilson If we materially change this agreement, we'll provide you with reasonable advance notice and the opportunity to review the changes, except number one, when we launch a new product Or feature. So I am not a legal expert, neither are you, Travis, but my simple brain interprets this as if we add a new feature that suddenly allows creators to use your likeness in whatever way they Want, we don't need to tell you about it. ([Time 0:27:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9d69eb19-b61e-4a81-8fd7-77309fbc051a)) - **YouTube Retains Monetization Control** - YouTube's monetization clause lets the platform run ads or charge fees on content and says the agreement does not entitle creators to payments. - Rob flagged past complaints where ads ran on demonetized channels, highlighting platform control over revenue. Transcript: Rob Wilson I think the most famous one, Travis, is this, which is right to monetize. And this has been established for quite a while. And it says, you grant to YouTube the right to monetize your content on the service. And such monetization may include displaying ads on or within content or charging users a fee for access. This agreement does not entitle you to any payments. A lot of creators have complained about YouTube running ads on their channel when they aren't yet monetized, thinking that they have a right to earn revenue whenever there's ads on There. And there's been this recent episode where channels have been demonetized for inauthentic content, and then ads are still running on their content. I don't know how true that is. I've not seen that myself, but a lot of, there's been enough people saying that that's happening for it to be a pattern that's probably likely. So that's two parts of the terms of service, which I think creators are maybe not aware of that they sign up to. ([Time 0:32:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e485ee08-7199-4efb-9cbb-6223e4454777)) - **Creators Operate At Platform's Mercy** - Rob and Travis argue YouTube is "their house": the platform can change rules, features, or monetization, and creators have limited recourse beyond leaving. - The hosts warn creators to weigh platform dependency as features evolve toward AI. Transcript: Rob Wilson Imagine if YouTube decided to just say, we're ending the YouTube partner program, folks. We're flicking the switch. You're not getting paid anything. We're going to take all the money. Now, obviously, everybody's going to leave a platform, but is everybody going to remember to delete all of their videos and take all of their content off? And this is a stupid hypothetical situation, but the wording there just means that all of the control is with YouTube. Oh, it does. Over these aspects of your content. No conspiracy theory. It does make you think about how much control do you have over your content and how much you should care about it when there are these terms of service right there that hardly anybody reads Travis I've said this for years and i still believe it to this day if youtube could get rid of content creators and have good content they would do that because it'd be cheaper for them um ([Time 0:35:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d6bc03ba-db34-4a8f-8d8d-45e4727c8b96)) - **Opt Out Of Third-Party Training** - Disable the channel-wide "Allow third-party training" option if you don't want other companies to train AI models on your channel. - This setting exists and can be unticked, but creators may still worry their past content was used. Transcript: Rob Wilson Allow third-party companies to train AI models using my channel's content. Again, my Simplicit Blaine translates this as, if you tick this, we can sell your video data to Meta and OpenAI to train their models for video generation. Okay. Now, obviously that's unticked, but just think about the wording here. Allow third-party companies. It doesn't say anything about Google themselves. So you would imagine that everything you upload to YouTube is content and data that they can use to train their models. Thankfully, this is a channel-wide setting, so you can untick this. ([Time 0:37:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8589c976-3ea2-4b3c-851e-59e3a7fce1aa))