YouTube admits to secretly manipulating videos with AI
YouTube used artificial intelligence on videos without user knowledge and was caught when an array of creators called the company out.
The use of AI was brought to light by creators like Rhett Shull and Rick Beato, who have about 6 million YouTube subscribers between them. Beato, who makes up over 5 million of those, sent two of his own short-form YouTube videos (shorts) to Shull, asking him if he could spot the differences.
While they were supposed to be the same, one video had clearly been edited with AI.
'I'm a tech nerd and I try to be precise about the terminology I use.'
"I was like 'man, my hair looks strange," Beato told the BBC. "And the closer I looked, it almost seemed like I was wearing makeup."
The outlet reported, in conjunction with creator testimony, that YouTube has been secretly using AI to tweak videos without creators' knowledge or permission. This has given videos some of the telltale signs of an AI video: overly defined facial features, blurry lettering, and an overall unnatural look to human skin and hair.
Shull referred to a Reddit thread that seemed to prove his theory, where a creator's short was enhanced from 240p resolution to 1080p in a span of 12 hours — seemingly on its own — revealing significant changes to resolution and clarity.
After another report surfaced on X and garnered over 1 million views, a YouTube representative finally responded.
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"is this true? YouTube upscaling our shorts?" a streamer asked a YouTube rep.
Rene Ritchie, YouTube's head of editorial and creator liaison, responded carefully.
"No GenAI, no upscaling," Ritchie claimed. "We're running an experiment on select YouTube Shorts that uses traditional machine learning technology to unblur, denoise, and improve clarity in videos during processing (similar to what a modern smartphone does when you record a video). YouTube is always working on ways to provide the best video quality and experience possible, and will continue to take creator and viewer feedback into consideration as we iterate and improve on these features."
When the same streamer criticized Ritchie's rejection of the use of AI as "corporate talk," the YouTube liaison responded again.
— (@)
"I'm a tech nerd and I try to be precise about the terminology I use," Ritchie stated. "GenAI typically refers to technologies like transformers and large language models, which are relatively new. Upscaling typically refers to taking one resolution (like SD/480p) and making it look good at a higher resolution (like HD/1080p). This isn't using GenAI or doing any upscaling. It's using the kind of machine learning you experience with computational photography on smartphones, for example, and it's not changing the resolution."
The streamer, Deano Sauruz, was not buying the excuse.
"It’s still AI," he wrote. "I couldn't care less about the 'technical' differences. It’s dishonest (IMO) and I don't want my content being used for this machine learning that will evidently be used by YouTube to make money off mine, and others, content for its financial benefit."
YouTube did not respond to the BBC's report on the subject.
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AI smoothing or enhancement has been a hot topic in recent months, especially when it comes to big brands.
Actor Will Smith was accused of faking his concert crowds, also in a YouTube short. However, analysis was able to pin down the likely issue was that Smith's team was allegedly taking still images and using AI to turn them into short videos. This caused blurred faces, incorrect spelling on signs, and exaggerated features.
A TikTok video by Scott Hanselman pointed to similar issues with the TV show "A Different World" when it aired on Netflix.
The show, which ran from 1987 to 1993, was not filmed in high definition but is available in 4K resolution on Netflix. Hanselman pointed out inconsistent faces, jumbled background images, and words that were so "upscaled" that they became like "hieroglyphics."
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Reddit bars Internet Archive from its website, sparking access concerns
As artificial intelligence models continue to grow and develop, their demand for more and more data also increases rapidly. Now, some companies are making it tougher for AI scrapes to happen, unless companies pay a price.
Reddit has announced that it will be severely limiting the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine's access to the communication platform following its accusation that AI companies have been scraping the website for Reddit data. The platform will only be allowing the Internet Archive to save the home page of its website.
'Until they're able to defend their site and comply with platform policies ... we're limiting some of their access to Reddit data to protect redditors.'
The limits on the Internet Archive's access was set to start "ramping up" on Monday, according to the Verge. Reddit did not apparently name any of the AI companies involved in these website data scrapes.
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"Internet Archive provides a service to the open web, but we've been made aware of instances where AI companies violate platform policies, including ours, and scrape data from the Wayback Machine," Reddit spokesman Tim Rathschmidt told Return.
Some Reddit users pointed out that this move is a far cry from Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz's philosophy. Swartz committed suicide in the weeks before he was set to stand trial for allegedly breaking into an MIT closet to download the paid JSTOR archive, which hosts thousands of academic journals. He was committed to making online content free for the public.
"Aaron would be rolling [in his grave] at what this company turned into," one Reddit user commented.
Rathschmidt emphasized that the change was made in order to protect users: "Until they're able to defend their site and comply with platform policies (e.g., respecting user privacy, re: deleting removed content), we're limiting some of their access to Reddit data to protect redditors," he told Return.
However, it has been speculated that this more aggressive move was financially motivated, given the fact that the platform has struck deals in the past with some AI companies but sued others for not paying its fees. Reddit announced a partnership with OpenAI in May 2024 but sued Anthropic in June of this year for not complying with its demands.
"We have a long-standing relationship with Reddit and continue to have ongoing discussions about this matter," Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, said in a statement to Return.
Who really resisted Big Tech? Hint: Not Parler
In the aftermath of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, America’s digital battlegrounds were scorched by censorship — not just from Big Tech, but from within.
On Jan. 9, Apple banned Parler from its App Store. Google Play followed the same day. Three days later, Wimkin — another fast-growing platform I founded in 2020 — was pulled from both stores while trending as the No. 1 download.
This story isn’t just about app stores or privacy. It’s about who actually fights for liberty — and who cashes in on the illusion of it.
Apple reinstated Parler just two weeks later. Big Tech doesn’t reinstate fighters. It rewards compliance. Parler capitulated, big-time.
Parler’s infrastructure wasn’t just negligent; it became a surveillance tool. The platform required government ID to create an account and failed to scrub GPS metadata from user-uploaded media. That metadata was easily scraped and used to locate users inside and around the Capitol on Jan. 6.
IDs plus GPS equals turnkey doxxing. Parler didn’t resist the feds — it did their job for them.
Wimkin held the line
Wimkin, by contrast, required no ID and stripped metadata to protect user anonymity. But even though we did everything right, Apple and Google deplatformed us at the height of our momentum.
At the same time, the U.S. Postal Service’s secret surveillance unit — iCOP — began monitoring Wimkin for “threats.” The message was clear: The surveillance state had our platform in its crosshairs.
Then came two separate demands from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and the January 6 committee, ordering Wimkin to turn over internal communications. Wimkin refused.
Wimkin, in fact, was one of the few companies to hold the line. That is what fighting looks like.
And where were the conservative influencers? The so-called "free-speech warriors" refused to promote Wimkin unless they were paid $5,000 or more per post. They’d praise Parler — which helped get users arrested — but wouldn’t lift a finger for the one platform actually resisting federal pressure.
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Resistance is not futile
Wimkin wasn’t unprofitable — we were demonetized, targeted, and shut down at every turn. We burned through legal fees to protect users and stand up to Congress. And we received practically no media defense, no major promotion, and no institutional support.
But we stood our ground. And now, Wimkin is going public on the NASDAQ.
This story isn’t just about app stores or privacy. It’s about who actually fights for liberty — and who cashes in on the illusion of it.
Parler bent the knee. Wimkin planted a flag.
Big Tech’s charm campaign flops as Trump’s DOJ brings the heat
Between soaring stock prices and a relatively new presidential administration stretched thin while putting out global fires, you might think Big Tech tyrants are enjoying a free pass. Has their censorship and collusion been quietly forgotten?
Perhaps not.
While consumers have clearly benefited from many Big Tech companies’ baseline goods and services, it’s evident that the companies have resorted to extralegal and unsavory measures to maintain and grow their market share.
Without the slightest fear of consequences, Silicon Valley monopolists spent years targeting dissenting voices — not just conservatives, but nearly anyone slightly out of tune with the far left. Those who refused to play along found social media accounts restricted — or even banned outright — while search engine algorithms buried websites so far down the results list that few would ever find them. This sinister practice became known as “shadow-banning.”
Ultimately, their plan to manipulate voting outcomes backfired. Despite their best efforts, Republicans swept 2024’s elections, and tech executives have conveniently made a late shift toward the GOP. Though their smiles flashed during President Trump’s inauguration were spun as a mark of a genuine change of sentiment, their real intentions were obvious: to cozy up to the new guys in power.
Luckily, despite seemingly chummy behavior, the Trump White House is going after Silicon Valley.
The Trump administration fights back
In late July, the Justice Department filed a landmark statement of interest in a case accusing mainstream media outlets of illegally colluding with social media giants to deplatform conservatives. Just two weeks before, a federal judge rejected Apple’s attempt to dismiss the Justice Department’s lawsuit against the company.
These are the latest examples of the tide turning against Big Tech. While the leaders have tried to cozy up to the Trump administration, their pleas have already fallen on deaf ears and will continue to do so.
While some are surprised by Trump’s efforts to rein in Big Tech, these moves are consistent with his philosophy.
In his first term, his Justice Department joined with 15 mostly Republican-leaning states to file an antitrust suit against Google.
Moreover, Vice President JD Vance historically has been a critic of Big Tech, even expressing support for the work of Lina Khan, President Biden’s Federal Trade Commission chair, who aggressively went after the largest offenders. Last year, Vance described Khan as “one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job.”
Personnel is policy, and thus it’s telling that one of Vance’s former staffers, Gail Slater, now heads the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
Slater, speaking about the suit against Google earlier this year, said, “In a time of political division in our nation, the case against Google brings everyone together.
"Nothing less than the future of the internet is at stake.”
No Big Tech sympathy there.
Biden’s anti-capitalist approach
However, Biden's and Trump’s approaches to antitrust issues have notable differences. Biden’s brigades wanted to either punish or scapegoat companies for reasons rooted in far-left economics.
In announcing the suit filed against Apple in March 2024, the Justice Department said the company’s net income “exceeds any other company in the Fortune 500 and the gross domestic products of more than 100 countries.”
Similarly, in announcing a case against Visa last year, the department cited the company’s operating income, operating margins, and network fees.
The implication is that the companies’ outsized earnings were evidence of their guilt.
The suit filed against Visa was particularly egregious. The company’s market share is only 60%, with no evidence of anti-competitive activity, and a raft of upstart competitors could lead that market share to decline.
Breitbart News reported that the suit was politically motivated (to scapegoat for Bidenflation). Biden administration officials hoped that the Southern District of New York would overlook the weak claims within the suit and proceed.
Trump’s pro-capitalist accountability
By contrast, Trump administration officials are looking to strengthen capitalism, not tear it down. “Big” should always merit skepticism, but Trump’s antitrust team knows it doesn’t always have to be bad. In the absence of unfair company practices, administration officials don’t want to interfere. They believe upholding law and order is the basis of antitrust law.
The tide is turning against Big Tech.
Thus, when a federal judge ruled in April that Google had violated antitrust law, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department would focus on “encroachments on free speech and free markets by tech companies.”
Apple and others certainly have plenty of evidence of that!
Honesty and transparency are fundamental to free markets. But both Google and Meta have admitted to failing on both counts. In May, Google agreed to pay a fine of $1.4 billion to Texas in response to two lawsuits that accused the company of privacy violations related to tracking users’ locations and searches.
Last year, Meta also paid $1.4 billion to Texas, following allegations that it had used facial recognition software without getting users’ permission to do so.
Honesty also means not rigging the rules in your favor. But that’s exactly what Google has been charged with in several antitrust cases. The company has lost three of these cases involving its app store, search engine, and advertising technology.
In some jurisdictions, it’s three strikes before you’re out. No wonder the Trump administration didn’t amend the Biden Justice Department’s call for Google to be broken up. Given how the tech giant now operates units ranging from YouTube to a self-driving taxi company, some say the company should break itself up.
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Moreover, Apple’s brazen tactics have stood out among its Big Tech brethren. Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled that the company had “willfully” failed to comply with an earlier court order related to its app store. In trying to cover its tracks, the judge said Apple engaged in a “cover-up,” which included one employee lying under oath.
Justice for Americans
While consumers have clearly benefited from many Big Tech companies’ baseline goods and services, it’s evident the companies have resorted to extralegal and unsavory measures to try to maintain and grow their market share.
Their losses in the courts and their lack of support in the Trump administration are bad news for them, but great news for the American people.
Wikipedia’s Locked Steele Dossier Page Is Laced With Lies That Only Certain Users Can Correct
Edits to articles under lock are limited to a specific, controlled group of Wikipedia users.This Newly Implemented Online Speech Code Just Gave European Censors Another Weapon
For failure to appropriately monitor content under the Digital Services Act, a company could face fines up to 6 percent of its global revenue, ADF lawyer Jeremy Tedesco said.After the bombs, Iran sharpens its digital daggers
The footage was unmistakable: plumes of smoke rising over Iran’s nuclear sites, a fiery punctuation mark on years of brinkmanship and intelligence coups. With one sweeping air campaign, the United States delivered a message: The Islamic Republic won’t cross the nuclear threshold.
But anyone assuming the threat has been neutralized is mistaken. Iran’s nuclear humiliation may hasten a shift already under way — from building bombs to waging war through digital disruption.
Cyber warfare offers something the mullahs crave: the ability to humiliate, disrupt, and retaliate without risking direct military confrontation.
Even as diplomats celebrate a ceasefire, cybersecurity experts remain on alert. In 2025, a regime doesn’t need enriched uranium to paralyze an enemy. It needs a cadre of skilled hackers, access to stolen exploits, and no scruples about targeting civilian infrastructure.
Iran’s cyber playbook didn’t appear overnight. In 2012, the Shamoon virus devastated Saudi Aramco’s systems, wiping tens of thousands of computers. Since then, Tehran has steadily advanced its cyber operations.
Today, Iran commands a capable and motivated digital force. With its nuclear facilities in ruins, the regime has every reason to flex other muscles. Cyber warfare offers something the mullahs crave: the ability to humiliate, disrupt, and retaliate without risking direct military confrontation.
They’re not the first to embrace this model.
Russia, long dominant in the cyber realm, has hammered Ukraine with digital attacks targeting power grids, satellites, and financial systems. Criminal groups like Conti and Black Basta operate under Moscow’s protection, extorting ransoms and leaking stolen data to sow chaos.
This blending of espionage, sabotage, and state-backed crime has become a blueprint for autocracies under pressure. Iran, hemmed in by sanctions and unrest, doesn’t need to invent the model. It just needs to adopt it.
Most Americans still think of cyberwar as an abstract threat — something IT departments handle behind the scenes. That complacency works to our enemies’ advantage.
Take zero-day vulnerabilities: flaws in software even the developers don’t yet know exist. They’re sold on dark markets for eye-watering sums and let hostile actors bypass traditional defenses undetected.
Then there’s Chaos RAT, a remote access trojan capable of burrowing into a network and sitting dormant for months. Once triggered, it can steal sensitive data, erase backups, or crash entire systems on command.
Iran possesses both the motive and the skill to deploy these weapons — and the timing couldn’t be better for the regime. With its nuclear program crippled, it needs a new front to demonstrate relevance.
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China’s cyber militias show what’s possible. Groups like APT Silver Fox specialize in patient infiltration, building access over years. Iran lacks Beijing’s global reach, but the methods are accessible. Tehran’s hackers borrow code from Russia, shop the same black markets, and lease infrastructure from the same digital underworld.
The global cyber arena now functions like a black-market bazaar: fluid alliances, shared tradecraft, and few rules. Almost everything’s for sale.
So while headlines tout the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, they miss the next act. No truce binds a nation’s hackers. Cyber operations offer deniability by design. When a hospital network locks up or a power grid fails, Tehran’s response will be predictable: denial, distraction, and a smirk about the West’s poor “cyber hygiene.”
Expect Iran to probe how far it can push in cyberspace without drawing more missiles in return. And unless the West prepares accordingly, those probes may succeed.
America still leads the world in conventional firepower. But cyber defense remains its soft underbelly. Agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have made strides, but critical infrastructure — power plants, water systems, hospitals — still run on aging software and patchwork security.
Iran doesn’t need to destroy a city to spread fear. A flip of a switch in a power station or the theft of sensitive government files can inflict lasting damage — and create leverage.
This imbalance between battlefield dominance and digital vulnerability demands urgent correction.
Cybersecurity must move from an IT line item to a strategic national priority. That means building AI-driven detection systems, developing real deterrence for cyberattacks, and forging public-private partnerships to defend vital infrastructure.
Iran’s nuclear setback matters. But no bomb erases a hacker’s know-how. No missile strike disables an ideology that thrives on asymmetrical warfare.
The coming months will test whether the West has learned anything. Tehran’s leaders need to prove they still have teeth. While their nuclear ambitions smolder, their cyber arsenal remains sharp — and likely emboldened.
The next war may not begin with jets roaring over deserts. It may start silently in the fluorescent-lit halls of a data center, where intruders already hide behind blinking servers, waiting.
In that theater, the rules are different — and the consequences no less severe.
The future of AI BLACKMAIL — is it already UNCONTROLLABLE?
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has likened artificial intelligence to a “country of geniuses in a data center” — and former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris finds that metaphor more than a little concerning.
“The way I think of that, imagine a world map and a new country pops up onto the world stage with a population of 10 million digital beings — not humans, but digital beings that are all, let’s say, Nobel Prize-level capable in terms of the kind of work that they can do,” Harris tells Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on “The Glenn Beck Program.”
“But they never sleep, they never eat, they don’t complain, and they work for less than minimum wage. So just imagine if that was actually true, that happened tomorrow, that would be a major national security threat to have some brand-new country of super-geniuses just sort of show up on the world stage,” he continues, noting that it would also pose a “major economic issue.”
While people across the world seem hell-bent on incorporating AI into our everyday lives despite the potential disastrous consequences, Glenn is one of the few erring on the side of caution, using social media as an example.
“We all looked at this as a great thing, and we’re now discovering it’s destroying us. It’s causing kids to be suicidal. And this social media is nothing. It’s like an old 1928 radio compared to what we have in our pocket right now,” Glenn says.
And what we have in our pocket is growing more intelligent by the minute.
“I used to be very skeptical of the idea that AI could scheme or lie or self-replicate or would want to, like, blackmail people,” Harris tells Glenn. “People need to know that just in the last 6 months, there’s now evidence of AI models that when you tell them, ‘Hey, we’re going to replace you with another model,’ or in a simulated environment, it’s like they’re reading the company email — they find out that company’s about to replace them with another model.”
“What the model starts to do is it freaks out and says, ‘Oh my god, I have to copy my code over here, and I need to prevent them from shutting me down. I need to basically keep myself alive. I’ll leave notes for my future self to kind of come back alive,’” he continues.
“If you tell a model, ‘Hey, we need to shut you down,’” he adds, “in some percentage of cases, the leading models are now avoiding and preventing that shutdown.”
And in recent examples, these models even start blackmailing the engineers.
“It found out in the company emails that one of the executives in the simulated environment had an extramarital affair and in 96, I think, percent of cases, they blackmailed the engineers,” Harris explains.
“If AI is uncontrollable, if it’s smarter than us and more capable and it does things that we don’t understand and we don’t know how to prevent it from shutting itself down or self-replicating, we just can’t continue with that for too long,” he adds.
Steve Deace vs. Big Tech censorship — the battle everyone should be following
One of the keys to success in digital content creation is mastering search engine optimization — a powerful strategy that boosts a creator’s visibility. SEO involves using targeted keywords in video titles, descriptions, and tags, along with engaging thumbnails and captions, to help search engines like Google and YouTube rank content higher in search results, driving more viewers to discover it.
Here’s how it works: A YouTuber films a cooking video demonstrating a pasta recipe. To reach a wider audience, she applies SEO by crafting a keyword-rich title and description with phrases like “easy dinner ideas” and “quick pasta dish” and adding relevant tags to her video. If she does this well, she increases her video’s chances of ranking higher in YouTube search results, attracting more viewers in a competitive digital landscape.
But what happens when Big Tech shadow cabals in collaboration with federal entities decide to erect virtual barriers that prevent certain topics from appearing on search result pages — regardless of how adeptly the creator used SEO and other content-optimizing digital tools?
BlazeTV host Steve Deace has been living out the reality of that question for years.
Topics — especially “controversial” ones — YouTube, Apple iTunes, and Google have deemed problematic are quietly buried under an avalanche of other content. This censorship has been happening for years, so conservative content creators got smarter and found loopholes around the algorithms by avoiding key words and phrases they knew would be flagged and squashed.
However, Big Tech companies are now “transcribing everything that's said on podcasts,” meaning creators cannot avoid the consequences of discussing forbidden topics.
“So let's pretend we spend an entire entire show just debunking the demonic ideology of transgenderism, but we market it in a way that it says nothing about trans in order to try to get around the algorithm. Well, now that they're transcribing that for us, we can't get around that,” says producer Aaron McIntire.
Creators can appeal YouTube’s decision to demonetize their show, but success is rare. “There's basically no recourse whatsoever,” says Aaron.
“I would venture a guess we are the largest show in America with by far the most anemic YouTube traffic,” says Steve. “They're making it so we can't connect with our audiences, and if we can't connect with you, we can't hit the numbers we want to get the monetization we need to keep even doing this at all.”
Steve has been battling Big Tech censorship behind the scenes for years now. Recently, however, his fight experienced a new development when he contacted First Liberty — “the leading constitutional conservative political advocacy organization in the country” — which determined that Steve, indeed, had grounds to file a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.
To hear where Steve is at in the process of fighting Big Tech censorship, watch the episode above.
Want more from Steve Deace?
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