Creator Weekly: YouTube AI Likeness Detection, Samsung Galaxy XR Creative Tools, Spooky Halloween Tips

It’s Halloween week, with tips and tools for making your videos and stories more spooky. Plus updates for YouTube, the new Android XR headset from Samsung, Instagram, Facebook, X and more.

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🗓 Ten Years Ago This Week: Ad Free Videos with YouTube Red

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing highlights from 2015.

In October 2015 YouTube launched the YouTube Red subscription with ad-free viewing, music and original shows. That became today’s YouTube Premium. Learn all about it.

🔴 Creator Weekly Live

Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday, 10:30AM Pacific time (6:30PM UTC). Join me live or watch the recording.

✅ Take this week’s quiz

What do you know about second chances on YouTube? Take this week’s quiz.

New Tips and Tutorials

Create a YouTube Course playlist of your tutorials to engage more viewers.

🎃Celebrate Halloween

Google Meet has Halloween backgrounds and filters.

YouTube Launches Creator Likeness Detection

YouTube is rolling out likeness detection to creators in the YouTube Partner Program. This is technology that “lets you easily detect, manage, and request the removal of unauthorized videos where your facial likeness may be altered or made with AI.”

To set this up you need to first provide your official ID and facial scan to YouTube.

It will become available over the next few months. Watch the Creator Insider video for a demo of the setup process.

The Content Detection tab in YouTube Studio lets you review both your copied videos for copyright issues and your detected likeness.

You can then submit a likeness removal request “if your likeness was altered or made with AI and you think that the video violates [YouTube’s] privacy guidelines”.

According to those guidelines, when considering the request, YouTube considers whether the content is realistic and disclosed to viewers as AI, and if it is parody, satire, or has public interest value. For public or well-known figures it also considers whether it depicts “sensitive” behavior like criminal activity, violence or endorsing something or someone.

YouTube Communities on Desktop

YouTube Communities are finally available on desktop!Previously they were only available in the mobile app.

Communities are available to all channels with existing access to posts and channel owners over 16.

On desktop you can set up your community by going to YouTube Studio > Community > Viewer Posts > Turn On.
In the YouTube mobile app you can enable your Community by opening your channel page > tap Create (pencil icon) > Turn your Community on.

This update will make Communities available to more viewers.

Samsung XR LaunchesWith Immersive Video and Creative Tools

The Samsung Galaxy XR is the first “extended reality” headset powered by Android XR. See a demo and learn more.

It “seamlessly blends digital content with the physical world in ways that feel intuitive and natural.”

That includes:

Surfing Youtube’s immersive 180- and 360-degree VR content and 3D video. Or watch Google TV or other streaming video.
Using Google Photos to turn your 2D images into 3D and step inside 360-degree images.
Create AI videos in Flow “in stunning detail”.
Use Adobe’s Project Pulsar immersive video editing app that lets you create photos and videos with 3D depth.
Use TopHatch’s Concepts app to sketch.
Google Maps 3D Immersive View with Gemini to answer questions.
Use Circle to Search to get more information about virtual or real-world objects.
Writing in Google Docs on virtual screens in a virtual environment.
Google Meet video calling “with video tiles you can expand to read expressions clearly.”

You can also pair a (real) keyboard and PC.

At $1799 it’s not cheap, but it’s half the price of an Apple Vision Pro.
If you have questions, there’s also a new Android XR help community.

X To Make Money Renting Rare Handles

X will be renting desirable handles that are “no longer in active use” to accounts with a Full Access Premium Business or Premium+ subscription. If the subscription is canceled or downgraded, the account will return to its original handle.

There are Priority Handles (“often including full names, multi-word phrases, or alphanumeric combinations”) and Rare Handles (“short, generic, or culturally significant names”). Priority Handles can be requested, but Rare Handles will be available through limited-time drops where you compete with other users based on your activity and engagement on X and intended use of the handle. How it works.

Rare Handles may cost from thousands to “over seven figures”, in addition to the subscription!

It isn't clear how "inactive" is defined and whether X will just grab handles it thinks it can get money for.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube now lets you set a time limit for how long you can scroll through Shorts.

YouTube is expanding their experiment that lets creators edit videos that violate policy. Initially this was available for some creators with age-restricted videos or videos that violated some Community Guidelines.This is now expanding to include videos that received a warning. Limitations: the creator must have access to advanced features, does not apply to all Community Guidelines violations, and only use one fix attempt per video. Check Studio to see if the option is available to you.

There are new “smart” Q&A stickers for YouTube mobile app live streams in English. You may see a banner with a suggested Q&A question you can tap to add. You can reposition the sticker and edit the suggestion. This is an “AI-powered low-friction tool” that “makes it easy to engage with an audience”.

Twitch is making it easier to track your Path to Partner status on your dashboard. Current requirements are 6 streams on 6 different days every 30 days for 2 consecutive months and 75 average viewers for 6 streams each month.

Tech reporter Taylor Lorenz interviewed Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, focusing on whether it’s hostile to women creators (some of whom reported harassment at last week’s TwitchCon) and its place in the current creator economy.

Twitch is about “belonging through our streamers and the communities they create” and says what sets it apart is that it’s a community-centric live streaming app.
About protecting Creators: it doesn’t sound like he knows what to do. Dan Clancy has apologized for problems at TwitchCon, and says they are reviewing their security, how they handle IRL streaming and accessibility issues.
About how Twitch is doing: “Really what you want to do is understand, does our business work when you look at the cost of content, the cost of streaming, the cost of running the service. You know, we’ve made like we’ve slimmed down our organization so I feel actually extremely good about the health of the business.”
About how people use the platform: “I think the change you’re seeing now is more and more people using live streaming as a secondary conduit of engaging their audience community or whatever.” Think musicians who want to stay connected with fans between albums and tours.

StreamYard has updated the Chat Overlay so that the messages are persistent if you toggle the overlay off and on, there’s a clear message when there aren’t any comments, and it’s automatically cleaned up between broadcasts.

Web Publishers and Search

Long live 3rd party cookies? Google completely killed their "Privacy Sandbox" after "low levels of adoption". The Privacy Sandbox would give advertisers user information while protecting privacy, with the goal of replacing 3rd party cookies. Earlier this year Google announced they would not be blocking 3rd party cookies in Chrome. So that seems done.

Google Ads turned 25. While no one loves ads (other than Google), at least in the early days it helped small businesses find customers and clients on the internet. And the platform Google set up for publishers on the other side of the ecosystem, with AdSense for Content and YouTube, has allowed bloggers and video creators to at least earn a little from their efforts. I think it’s fair to say Google Ads (formerly AdWords) helped shaped the internet we have today. And yes, of course, now it’s all about AI tools.

Gawker founding editor Elizabeth Spiers on blogging: "Early blogging was slower, less beholden to the hourly news cycle, and people were more inclined to talk about personal enthusiasms as well as what was going on in the world because blogs were considered an individual enterprise, not necessarily akin to a regular publication." (I miss this!)

Nieman Journalism Lab: Talking Points Memo is doing a fun series about the last 25 years of digital media

Ads are going to start appearing on Tumblr blogs hosted on tumblr.com. There will be one dismissable ad at the bottom of each page. This does not affect blogs with custom domains or paid Premium subscribers, which will be ad-free. Ads also won’t show on the dashboard or mobile apps.

Social Media

Finally! Instagram now lets you see your Reel watch history (Settings > Your Activity > Watch History). You can filter by date and author.

Meta AI is now available to edit Instagram Stories. You can use the tool to add, remove or change your image by typing in a prompt. You can also restyle your photos or use preset effects.

Andrew Hutchinson @ Social Media Today: Meta Continues To Miss the Mark With New App Additions. They are good at copying popular features though.

This is a hard “no” from me: Facebook’s new button lets its AI look at photos you haven’t uploaded yet. “If you opt in, Meta’s AI will comb through your camera roll, upload your unpublished photos to Meta’s cloud, and surface “hidden gems” that are “lost among screenshots, receipts, and random snaps,” the company says.” Learn more about Facebook’s new feature that suggests edits and collages.

Maybe shared links on X will be getting more reach. Social Media Today reports X Is Testing a New Way To Handle Links in Posts

Communication and Collaboration

If you are a Google Fi Wireless user, check out the nice new updates, including Wi-Fi Auto Connect and AI-powered account summaries.

Google Meet has added waiting rooms, which lets hosts and co-hosts control when participants join a meeting. And participants can be moved back to the waiting room as needed, allowing speaking with some participants privately. This feature is rolling out to Standard and Plus Business and Enterprise Google Workspace accounts, as well as Google Workspace Individual accounts.

More AI Updates and Tips

Copilot Mode in the Microsoft Edge browser has new features that brings you back to where you left off in previous sessions, can complete multi-step actions, and (optionally) uses your past browsing history.

ChatGPT Atlas is a new web browser with AI features. Simon Willison explains why there are potential security and privacy issues.

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