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Last week was the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2025, and as with everything these days, AI was a hot topic of discussion. While big tech was always going to be a massive presence at the festival, it was the CEO of YouTube, Neal Mohan, who got content creators the most excited.
Speaking at the advertising soirée, the chief executive announced that Deepmind’s video generation tool, Veo, will “be coming to YouTube Shorts later this summer”.
“I believe these tools will open new creative lanes for everyone to explore. Language, for example, is one of the biggest barriers to growing a global audience. Our Auto Dubbing feature already translates videos across 9 different languages with 11 more coming soon, and dramatically increases the potential audiences a creator or brand can reach.”
“In the six months since creators started using this feature, we’ve already dubbed more than 20 million videos using AI. The possibilities with AI are limitless,” Mohan added.
What the addition of Veo to YouTube really means is that a massive wave of AI slop will soon descend on YouTube. It’s important to note that Veo is only coming to Shorts and not the wider YouTube platform, at least for now. But you bet that will change once all the frogs get used to the warming waters. Perhaps most concerning is that Veo is really, really good, and the content it produces is incredibly convincing.
When Veo 3 launched, Mashable took a look at how it was being used, and it was already producing video that could fool unsuspecting internet users.
Combined with YouTube dialling back its misinformation alerts and removing them on Shorts altogether, this could become a disaster as AI-generated clips flood the platform. Pretty soon, it may be impossible to discern between real and fake.
For those who still don’t know, “AI slop” is a slang term to describe content generated by artificial intelligence that feels “generic, bland, overly polished, or soulless.” Think of it as the Real Housewives of AI.
This may be bad news for creators on YouTube who depend on the platform to earn a living. As more AI floods YouTube, the amount of advertising revenue that is split between creators gets less, and ultimately, the platform is worse off.
Many users are none too pleased with this announcement and have vowed to leave the platform should AI slop feature too heavily on YouTube. But honestly, where will they go? TikTok? Pffft. With 2.5 billion monthly users worldwide, YouTube has become the Netflix of internet videos, and trying to quit the Tube is nearly impossible.
If you’re still on the fence over AI-generated videos, watch the latest episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and then decide if you still think AI content is just about being creative.
[Source: HXTX]