YouTube has responded:

> We hear you, and want to clear things up! This is from an experiment to improve video quality with traditional machine learning – not GenAI. More info from @YouTubeInsider here:

> No GenAI, no upscaling. 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

https://x.com/TeamYouTube/status/1958286550229541158

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RankingMember 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Love the "[company] is always working on ways to provide the best..." that's always in these explanations, like "you actually just caught us doing something good! You're welcome!"

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corytheboyd 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

All of which is pretty reasonable, especially for shorts, which are meant to be thrown directly in the trash after being used to collect some ad revenue anyway, right?

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netdur 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This outrage feels odd, TV has "improved" movies for ages, youtube doing it with machine learning is the same idea, are we really upset because an ear looks a bit clearer?

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rurp 2 days ago | parent [-]

No, people are upset because Youtube is editing their content without telling them. If they really thought this was a high value add they could have added an enhance button to let creators opt in, as has been done elsewhere. I wouldn't like it if HN started "optimizing" the wording my comments without telling me, even if it made them better along some metric.

	▲	netdur 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You’re conflating editing with rendering, YouTube didn’t overwrite creators's uploads, it applied an ML filter in the streaming/transcode pipeline, the same layer that already resizes, compresses, and tone-maps. That's not "editing my content" any more than your TV's sharpness setting edits a film, An "Enhance" toggle/label would be good UX, but calling it silent edits misdescribes what's happening PS: this isn't "generative AI" It's basic ML enhancement (denoise/sharpen/tone-map)
	▲	mvdtnz 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		"Editing" implies they are applying some kind of editorial change. From what I've seen it's a sharpening/upscaling filter to improve visual quality. If your issue is that Youtube is changing the quality of the video, well, they have been doing that since the very first video every uploaded to Youtube. All Youtube videos are compressed, they have always had that ugly softness to them. I'm not seeing the outrage here.