Just got a notification today on my channel (used only to hold videos linked to my iNat observations) that Youtube now has an option to allow / disallow one’s videos to be used for training of third party AI models. Thankfully, this is opted out by default.
However, if anyone wishes to check on this or enable/disable this setting, the way to do so is in Youtube Studio → Settings → Channel → Advanced Settings (scroll all the way down) where there is a box to check/uncheck.
As iNat is invaluable for biodiversity research, I feel that allowing this will result in the creation of more AI-generated videos depicting inaccurate taxonomy, behaviour and movement, particularly when it comes to obscure species for which limited video and photographic evidence exists.
i don’t understand the point of this thread. videos on YouTube are not permissioned for AI stuff by default, and it seems like you think that’s a good thing, but then you’re promoting the fact that videos could be used for AI stuff and telling folks how to allow that.
I apologise if I was unclear. I am against it, however, I’m not holding it against anyone if they actually want their videos to be used for generative AI.
It is still important to call attention to this as other platforms have been known to change this to allowing it by default.
There may be several people using both platforms that may not be aware of the increasing creep of AI on the YouTube platform
That, perhaps a pop-up could lead to mistaken permission for AI.
i still don’t understand why there was need to point to some possible future problem, and you might be misunderstanding the effect of the change.
the way i look at it, YouTube introducing a policy to allow folks to opt into AI is stuff seems to be what most folks would have wanted. i haven’t heard that other platforms have put in explicit policies to opt people into allowing AI stuff by default. instead, i think most platforms – including iNaturalist, i believe – have no policy for or against third parties using user content for AI purposes, and since there is little law or precedent related to this sort of thing, randos just go ahead and use the stuff.
in other words, YouTube’s change is meant to be a proactive way to protect user rights / expectations, in the absence of any other established mechanism to do that, and i don’t think it should be seen as a warning that they will opt you into allowing AI stuff in the future.
if there’s a discussion to be had here, i would think it would something along the lines of: will iNaturalist similarly do something proactive to allow users to explicitly disallow others from using their content for AI stuff? (i suspect a policy like that might complicate the situation related to the AWS Open Data set and so probably would be a no go.)
This discussion, and forum section as a whole, is not limited to either iNat or Youtube. This is to talk about anything nature related.
I am not sure if we are misunderstanding each other. Personally I am against my content being used for AI, but I respect that other people may not share that view and am simply stating where the option to toggle that on/off may be.