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YouTube to double its profits overnight?

Ever since YouTube started sharing its ad revenues with creators it has been trying to come up with ways to reduce the financial burden this represents.

Presently, there's roughly a 50/50 split on ad revenues which means YouTube has to pass on half the money it's paid for the ads that run on its platform. That has to hurt.

Imagine if the company could come up with a way of reducing the amount it pays to creators; even small changes here could provide a significant boost to the company's bottom line.

Even better, imagine if it could dispense with having to pay creators at all -- that'd see profits more than double overnight.

Well call me a cynic but, having been part of the YouTube partner program almost since its very inception, I have fears that the company is about to make some huge changes that could make traditional creators redundant.

At the heart of these changes is Google's new Veo 3 AI video generator which has become incredibly good at making professional-grade video content from interactive text prompts.

I won't pad out today's column by embedding a raft of mind-blowing videos created by Veo 3 because I'm sure Aardvark readers are savvy enough to find them for themselves. Suffice to say that this stuff has already reached the level of being "game changing".

It's my honest belief that sometime in the next 12 months there's going to be a hugely viral video movie or short film that has been made entirely with AI video generators. This will be the Blair Witch equivalent, a piece of video that rockets this technology into the mainstream and sets a benchmark for all that is to follow.

Instead of hiring screenwriters, filmcrews, directors, producers, actors, editors, colorists, VFX specialists and compositors, now anyone with an idea and the ability to hone their AI prompting skills has the potential to create a blockbuster video to rival the best Hollywood can offer. What's more, they can do it for a tiny, tiny fraction the cost.

With the average Hollywood movie costing at least $100 million to make, even Veo 3's princely sum of $250 per month is a pittance by comparison.

I would expect that a suitably talented individual could create their own Hollywood-equivalent movie within a few short months, certainly less than a year, and do so for just thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in AI video rendering time.

This could turn the movie industry on its head. Talk about "disruptive technology".

The place we can look for the early signs of this is YouTube of course.

There is already a growing tsunami of AI-created dross on YouTube but most of it to date has been pretty crappy and easily recognised for what it is. Regardless of that, there are now many channels that contain nothing more than AI-dross and they have millions of subscribers with each video getting hundreds of thousands of views of these documentary-style productions.

Apparently people like content that is mind-numbingly patronising and an insult to intelligence.

The next step will be narrative videos where virtually every aspect of the job has been done by AI. Whole new AI actors will be born who will gather a following every bit as powerful as that enjoyed by *actual* actors. Their fans will watch all their movies for the same reason that there are fans of Tom Cruise, Scarlet Johanssen and the like.

I've already seen some subtle hinting that YouTube is going to be pushing Veo 3 onto its existing content creators as a way of improving the quality and quantity of their videos. "Make [us] more money" will be the justification.

However, when you realise that YouTube is already using AI to prompt its creators with ideas for new videos it's a very short step, now that Veo 3 can create such high quality video, to eliminate the creator from that loop completely.

Just hook the existing "video suggestion" AI up to Veo 3 and the videos make themselves. They then appear on the platform with ads and YouTube pockets *all* the revenue.

Although real creators will still exist, at least for a while, YouTube will promote its 100% profit totally AI offerings ahead of videos that require it to split revenues with creators.

Over time this will see the genuine, human-generated content effectively sidelined and replaced with completely AI-generated stuff. And viewers will love it.

AI will not only create the videos but it will also analyse viewing data to the n'th degree and hone its output to feed whatever the desires of its audience are.

Old-fashioned, man-made videos will not stand a chance.

Ah well, it was good while it lasted.

Meanwhile, I expect a whole lot of professionals in the movie and TV industries are busy looking for alternative careers as they see AI wading in and stealing all the jobs from them.

I guess now we know how all those disposessed of their jobs in the industrial revolution felt.

Such is progress?

Carpe Diem folks!

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