Weekly Update: AI-Upscaled YouTube Videos, Free Affinity, Patreon Newsletters

Shockingly, it's already the first of November. Now is the time to work on those projects you want to finish by the end of the year!

This week there are big updates from YouTube, Adobe, Canva and Affinity, Patreon, AdSense, Bluesky and more.

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🗓 Ten Years Ago This Week: RankBrain brings AI to Search

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing highlights from 2015.
Launched in 2015, RankBrain was Google Search’s first AI-powered ranking system. Since then Google has added a number of other AI systems to help understand what people are trying to find and rank relevant web pages. Learn more.

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New Tips and Tutorials

Learn all about how to build Community on YouTube with comments, posts and live streams.

To Do & Try

If you save bookmarks in the Chrome browser, you can type @bookmarks in the address bar to search them. Watch a Short showing you how. (I have roughly a zillion bookmarks so this is handy!)

Improved YouTube on TV: AI Upscaling, Immersive Browsing, Shopping QR Codes

YouTube launched new features to optimize content for big screen TVs (or, as YouTube puts it, for your living room).

AI upscaling of SD videos to HD (and eventually 4K). The graphic in the announcement shows upscaling from 240p to “super resolution” 480p, 720p, and 1080p. (Yes you can opt out! See below)

Increase max thumbnail file size from 2MB to 50MB

Viewers can flip through YouTube channels on the homepage with Netflix-like immersive previews.

Contextual search. Search from a Creator’s channel will have results from that channel at the top.
Shopping QR codes viewers can use to open the product page on their phone.

The AI upscaling is the most controversial update. Creators can now opt out of all YouTube’s automatic “quality enhancements” in YouTube Studio, as the changes can override creative choices. There are settings for:

Visual enhancements: Brightness and color, video clarity and sharpness, increased video resolution “which uses Google-built technology to make low resolution uploads look like they were filmed in HD” (AI upscaling).
Audio enhancements: Volume levels and sound mixing, “Stable volume” to balance the range between quiet and loud parts of a video

YouTube Strengthens Online Gambling and Graphic Violence in Gaming Policy

YouTube is making their policies around online gambling and graphic violence in gaming stricter.

Online gambling: It is only permitted to direct viewers to online gambling sites that are certified by Google. This policy will now include online gambling with digital goods like video game skins and NFTs.

Social casino content: Content that “depicts, promotes or facilitates” social casino sites where nothing of real-world monetary value is wagered will now be age-restricted.

Graphic gaming content: YouTube will now age-restrict video game content “featuring realistic human characters that focuses on scenes of torture or scenes of mass violence against non-combatants.”

For policy enforcement YouTube will consider how realistic the characters look, the duration of the graphic scene, and the prominence of the violent imagery.

This may affect videos with clips from some popular games like GTA 6.

Existing content may be age-restricted or removed without a strike. It may also be possible to trim or blur videos to remove content that violates these policies. There will also be an option to appeal.

This policy goes into effect on November 17th.

Affinity for Free

Canva acquired the Affinity professional creative suite (Designer, Photo and Publisher) in 2024. They have now launched the “all-new Affinity” which is “completely free, forever” (with a free Canva account).

Professional vector, photo and layout tools are now in one space.
Fully customizable studios to mix and match tools.
Canva Premium subscribers can access Canva AI Studio in Affinity. “Canva AI features are built with privacy and control in mind, ensuring that your creative work in Affinity stays secure and is not used to train AI features.”
You can export Affinity projects into Canva. This is the benefit for Canva, getting professional graphics folks into the Canva ecosystem.

Affinity is available for Mac, Windows and soon for iPad.

The Canva Creative Operating System

Canva introduced what they call their “Creative Operating System”.

Video 2.0: video editing with a new timeline editor, AI Magic Video that creates video from clips, new templates.
Canva Forms: Customizable interactive forms. Responses go to Canva Sheets.
Canva Code: Customizable creations that can be published with their own URL.
Canva Email Design: Create visual email campaigns.

And So. Much. AI.

Canva Design AI Model: “the world’s first AI model trained to understand the full complexity of design. Unlike models that generate static images, it understands every aspect of design from structure and layering to hierarchy, branding, and visual logic, creating fully editable content in seconds.”
This is available inside other platforms including ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.
AI-Powered Designs: Generate editable designs inside the editor.
AI-Powered Elements: create 3D elements, icons, shapes, photos, videos and more.
Style Match: Unify a design by matching the look and feel of other elements.
Magic Background: Generate a background that “seamlessly fits your design”.
Ask @Canva: Get assistance with your designs.
Canva Grow: A “marketing engine” that scans your website for branding, then helps you create relevant content.
New Brand System and Brand Kit homepage: For organizations to help manage consistent branding.

Canva also introduced “Canva Business”, a new subscription plan for “individuals, marketers, and small teams”, that replaces Canva Teams. It includes current Canva Pro for Individuals features, plus team tools and higher AI usage limits. The current plans are free, Pro ($120/year/person), Business ($200/year/person “intro” price) and Enterprise (cost available on request). The retired Canva Teams subscription was $100/year/person with a minimum of 3 people, so this doubles the cost for small teams.

Adobe MAX: Firefly, YouTube Shorts Integrations, AI Tools

This week Adobe announced new features, tools, and AI agents at the Adobe Max conference. Some highlights for creators:

The free Adobe Premiere iOS mobile app connects directly to YouTube Shorts, with exclusive “on trend” templates, effects, and transitions. Learn more. (You can pre-register for the Premiere Android beta.)

Adobe Firefly is now an all-in-one AI creative studio, with video, audio, image and design tools. It offers Firefly Image Model 5, and Partner models from Google, OpenAI, Luma AI, ElevenLabs and Topaz Labs. It’s free to use, but you need a paid plan to unlock all the tools

Firefly Boards creative brainstorming.
Generate Soundtrack (public beta) music for your video.
Generate Speech (public beta) generates “lifelike” voiceovers from a script.
Enhance Speech removes background noise.
Generate Sound Effects
Video Generation from a description or images.
Video Editor with a multi-timeline interface to combine your footage with AI-generated footage. (Waitlist)
Prompt to Edit images.
Layered Image Editing with objects on different layers.
Project Moonlight (private beta) conversational AI that suggests new content “based on what’s resonating in your social channels” and “undertakes multi-step tasks. (Waitlist)

There are, of course, new AI tools using Adobe and partner models:

Adobe Express: New AI Assistant chatbot to easily “generate images, change backgrounds and text, and replace objects -- without having to know which tool or model to use or which steps to take.” (Requires Adobe Express Premium or use of Firefly credits).
Photoshop: Generative fill (Google Nano Banana, Black Forest Labs, FLUX.1 Kontext, Firefly Image); Generative Upscale (Topaz Labs AI), Harmonize (blending objects into scenes).
Premiere (public beta): AI Object Mask (edit and track objects and people); Rectangle, Ellipse and Pen Masking (targeted adjustments); Fast Vector mask
Lightroom: Assisted Culling (find the best images)

And you can get sneak peeks into experimental tools for image, video and sound editing.

Patreon Newsletters

Patreon has made a major update to its email newsletter features. A copy of the newsletter is also published as a post on the Creator’s Patreon page. Features include:

No-code layout editor.
Include multiple video and audio clips. It’s linked to your Patreon page where fans can comment and chat.
Custom call-to-action buttons that you can link to your shop, ticket sales, podcast episodes and more.
Flexible previews, with a teaser for free and the full newsletter for paid patrons.
More metrics, including open and click rate, and revenue and member conversions.

It feels like a convergence of blogging + social + newsletter platforms, with Patreon encouraging newsletters, Substack with social features and Beehiiv offering new website features.

Note that it is possible to import an existing mailing list with the assistance of Patreon support (who will check if you qualify first). There is no indication you can export your list, so it sounds like readers would be locked in to the platform.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube now lets live streamers opt out of “Top Fan” leaderboards. The leaderboard is based on live chat and Super Chats.

YouTube has reorganized product teams with a new VPs for Subscriptions Products, Viewer Products, and Creator & Community Products (with a special focus on AI tools, YouTube Shorts , and YouTube Live).

Google Photos is rolling out video creation templates in the Android and iOS phone apps (but not tablets). Templates are pre-packaged videos with text, trendy music and beat matching. You can choose photos and videos to add or tap “Help me select” for suggestions. Learn how.

TikTok is rolling out AI-powered video editing tools:

Smart Split cuts longer videos into clips. This is available in TikTok Studio Web globally.
AI Outline generates video titles, hashtags, hooks and outlines from a prompt or highly searched topic in Creator Search Insights. The outline can be customized. This is available in the US, Canada, and other select markets.

TikTok updated revenue sharing for Subscriptions. After fees Creators receive 70% of the revenue, and larger channels (10K+ followers, 100K+ views in the past month) can receive up to 90%.

I am not particularly surprised that the sale of TikTok to US buyers is not actually finalized yet.

You can now customize chat overlays in StreamYard.

Web Publishers and Search

Google Search Console introduced query groups in Search Console Insights. This groups together queries with similar user intent (“how to make guacamole dip”, “recipe for guacamole dip”, “guac dip recipe”) to make it easier to understand the searches leading to your site. Insights shows Top, Trending Up and Trending Down queries. And you can click on any query group to drill down to individual queries.

Automattic and the Internet Archive created a WordPress plugin to combat link rot. It scans outbound links in post content, creates a snapshot in the Internet Archive, and then if that linked page disappears from the web, redirects to the archived version. Get it for your blog.

AdSense (including AdSense for YouTube), AdMob, and Ad Manager publishers in China and Argentina can now choose PayPal Hyperwallet as their payment method. This is already available in the US. Once this is set up, payments can be arranged through PayPal and cash pickup.

Starting November 6, AdSense is replacing the “Ad networks” blocking control with a new “Authorized Buyers” blocking control. Going forward new authorized buyers will be allowed by default. You can find this in your Brand Safety controls, and no action is needed for this change.

Social Media

Bluesky is working to build "healthier social media”. Some of the things they are working on:

Social Proximity: Mapping “social neighborhoods” on Bluesky and prioritizing replies from people “closer to your neighborhood”
Dislikes: They will soon test private dislikes as a way to help the system understand what you want to see less of, and reduce the visibility of low-quality replies. This may also affect the experience of others in your “social neighborhood.”
Improved toxicity detection: Detecting spammy, toxic, off-topic or bad faith replies and down-ranking them in reply threads, search results and notifications.
Reply with context: When you click “Reply” you are first taken to the full thread so you can read before replying.
Clearer design for post reply settings.

Bluesky has hit 40 million users, and is aiming for 50 million.

If you run a custom feed on Bluesky you will now be able to know when people like, quote, repost, reply and see posts in your feed.

If you use a hardware security key or passkey for X sign-in, you need to make sure to reaffirm your details so they are associated with x.com and not twitter.com. This may be the first step towards retiring the Twitter domain entirely. As 9to5Mac drolly puts it: “Given Musk’s track-record of giving long and careful consideration before implementing new policies, I’m sure that the company has rigorously thought through all of the potential ramifications of deleting one of the world’s most commonly-used domains, will do extensive testing in the next fortnight, and that absolutely nothing will break.” Uh-huh.

Threads lets you hold replies to your posts for approval.

Threads launched disappearing posts. The posts are automatically archived (not deleted) after 24 hours. Replies are sent to the poster’s DM inbox, and it’s not publicly visible who liked or replied to the post. Your latest ghost post appears on your profile photo like a status update. (There was an issue with ghost posts being indexed by Google, but that has been fixed.)

Threads now has more than 150 million daily active users. How does that compare to other platforms? Most only share monthly active users, which would be a higher number, so direct comparison isn’t possible.

Instagram is testing letting you “tune your algorithm” by adding and removing topics you are interested in.

Pinterest Assistant is an AI “visual-first” shopping tool that uses your saves, boards and collages (and other people with similar taste) to make recommendations.

Lia Haberman reports that LinkedIn’s Senior Director of Product Marketing says hashtags are essentially decorative. It can give people a suggestion about what your content is about but “it’s not going to juice your distribution.”

Communication and Collaboration

It’s now possible to create Google Slides presentations in the Gemini app. In Canvas you can either upload a source or enter a text prompt and Gemini will generate slides with images. The slides can be exported to Google Slides to edit or collaborate with others. This is available to Google Workspace Business, Enterprise, Essentials, Education and Nonprofits accounts, and personal accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription.

When you use Gemini in Google Docs you can now ask it to only pull details from sources you have linked in the document. Previously you would have to individually add files in the prompt field.

Google Sheets has more powerful Connect Sheets pivot tables, with up to 200,000 rows (backed by BigQuery) and the ability to “drill down” to “access the granular data making up any aggregated value”.

If working with a VR headset on is your kind of thing, the “full power of Windows 11 and Windows 365” is now available on the Meta Quest.

More AI Updates and Tips

PetaPixel reports: Sony Is the First Camera Company to Verify Authenticity of Video Content:
“Sony’s camera authenticity solution verification site can authenticate and verify still images and videos captured by compatible Sony cameras, confirming that the content in question was, in fact, recorded by an approved Sony camera rather than AI-generated. The system verifies video in multiple ways, including by detecting 3D depth information, which can confirm not only that the video is legitimate but also that it captured actual three-dimensional objects in the real world.”

OpenAI restructured and Microsoft reaffirmed their partnership (with some updated terms).

Jason Koebler @ 404 Media: Grokipedia Is the Antithesis of Everything That Makes Wikipedia Good, Useful, and Human

Andrew Deck @ Nieman Lab: Hundreds of thousands of videos from news publishers like The New York Times and Vox were used to train AI models

Anil Dash: ChatGPT's Atlas: The Browser That's Anti-Web

Google AI Studio now has user-friendly vibe coding that lets you go from a single prompt to an AI-powered app.

NotebookLM has improved chat performance, quality and contextual understanding. You can also customize chat for your goals (“treat me like a PhD candidate”, “act as lead marketing strategist”).

Google Mixboard vision board is now available in 180 more countries.

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