Thinking of making a video for YouTube Shorts? Creators will soon be able to use AI clones of themselves to generate bite-sized videos without moving from their couch. 

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced the change in his annual letter released earlier this week. He wrote that YouTube is planning a significant expansion of AI creator tools this year, including a new feature that lets creators generate Shorts using an AI clone of their own likeness. 

“This year you’ll be able to create a Short using your own likeness, produce games with a simple text prompt, and experiment with music,” Mohan wrote. “Throughout this evolution, AI will remain a tool for expression, not a replacement.”

Mohan stated that more than one million channels used YouTube’s AI creation tools daily in December. These tools include auto-dubbing, which lets creators easily translate their videos into other languages for new audiences, and Dream Screen, which turns written prompts into AI-generated backgrounds in Shorts. 

The new AI clone tool will give creators new ways to appear in content without filming themselves directly. The feature only applies to Shorts, YouTube’s short-form vertical video format that now averages around 200 billion daily views. 

YouTube has not yet detailed how likeness capture, training or editing will work, nor when exactly the tool will roll out beyond “this year.”

Expert says AI clones risk losing authenticity

An expert is concerned about the effects of AI clones on communication. Dr. Patrick R. Riccards is the founder and CEO of the Driving Force Institute, a history education platform. Riccards told Entrepreneur in an emailed statement that AI clones in Shorts are “the natural progression of AI in communications, born from letting AI write our quotes or smooth out our statements.”

“But when we hand this work over to our AI clones, we lose our authentic voice,” Riccards cautioned. “Everything will start sounding the same, points will meld together, and the AI will be aggregating from the same stories and the same pools of knowledge. That may be great for those seeking a homogeneous media, but it takes away the unique voices, the distinct personalities, and what makes us human.”

According to Riccards, viewers will prefer “an authentic, inarticulate human” to a “polished, canned AI bot.” He stated that “successful communication requires humanity.”

While YouTube is leaning into AI, it is also trying to avoid flooding viewers with low-quality “AI slop,” or AI content lacking depth or originality. Mohan wrote in his letter that the company is enhancing existing ranking and moderation systems that have already been used to fight spam and clickbait. YouTube will tune these systems to reduce the spread of low-quality content. 

“Ultimately, we’re focused on ensuring AI serves the people who make YouTube great: the creators, artists, partners, and billions of viewers,” Mohan wrote. 

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