Creator Weekly: YouTube Voice Comments, Twitch Suspensions, Google Vids Longer Videos

As February comes to a close there are several new features from YouTube, Twitch, Discord, Google Vids, Threads and Bluesky. You should review your Amazon Wishlist settings and check your AdSense reports. And on the AI front Google updated Flow and released Nano Banana 2.

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What do you know about Google’s AI Music Generator? Take this week’s quiz.

To Do & Try

ProducerAI, “built with, and for, a passionate community of [music] artists”, is now part of Google Labs. It includes “Spaces”, which lets music artists “use natural language to create completely new instruments” and effects. Try it at www.producer.ai.

Google Photos for Android now lets you create custom stickers from your photos. You do need to start with a photo that has a clearly defined subject in the foreground. This feature is already available for iPhone and iPad. Try it.

YouTube Voice Replies

YouTube voice replies are now available to all creators.

This lets you record and post voice replies to comments on your own channel using the YouTube and YouTube Studio mobile apps.

Only the transcription of the recording appears on desktop (so speak clearly!).

Google Vids Longer Videos and Cartoon Avatars

Google Vids now lets you create videos up to 30 minutes long (previously 10 minutes). You can import video and audio clips up to 90 minutes/4GB, but they need to be edited down to 30 minutes for full editing capabilities. This means you can now edit recorded meetings in Vids!

The free browser-based (desktop only) Google Vids video editor is available to everyone with a Google Account, but free personal accounts don't have access to all the generative AI tools.

You can use Google Vids to create either landscape or vertical videos and it's integrated with Google Drive.

Google Vids also added 2D and 3D cartoon avatars, meant to be more approachable and engaging than realistic avatars (which I think are a bit uncanny valleyish). These are available to Google Workspace accounts or personal accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription.

And the AI avatars can now speak Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Korean and Japanese, in addition to English.

Twitch “Modernizes” Its Suspension Policies

Twitch updated its suspension policy to make restrictions better match the offense. There are now two suspension types: streaming suspensions and chatting suspensions.

If the Community Guidelines violation happens while streaming or creating content (such as stories), the penalty is restriction on going live and disabled live chat on their channel (existing clips and VODs will still be available). It will not affect watching streams or participating in chat on other channels.

If Community Guidelines are violated in chat, the streamer can continue to stream and chat on their own channel, but won’t be able to chat on other people’s streams.

Suspensions can last from 24 hours to 30 days. If there are multiple violations, the length of the suspension will increase for each subsequent violation.

High severity violations may result in both a chatting suspension and a streaming suspension, and could mean losing access completely.

If you believe your channel was suspended in error, you can appeal.

Twitch notes that only 2% of active users have received a suspension, and only 10% of suspended users reoffend.

Discord Cuts Ties With Persona

Discord has cut ties with Persona, which it was testing as an age verification platform in the UK. Persona is widely used for age and identity verification, including by Google AdSense (optionally), LinkedIn and Reddit.

Security researchers discovered that Persona “performs 269 distinct verification checks and scours the internet and government sources for potential matches”. That includes comparing selfies to terrorist watchlists and other databases.

Persona says concerns are based on a misunderstanding.

Persona CEO Rick Song explained, “What was found was uncompressed files of a front end that’s already on every single person’s device,” he said, adding the information is available on the company’s help center and API documentation. “I don’t think having uncompressed files online is good,” Song went on, but added the information found by the researcher is the uncompressed version of a company’s compressed source map online. ... I think this is one of these in which the contents of it seems scarier, but…internally, we didn’t consider this even a major vulnerability.”

He also denied any connection to the US Government, ICE, or Peter Theil’s Palantir.

Discord still needs to verify adult users, somehow, as it’s required by various governments. They say that “90% of users will never need to verify their age to continue using Discord exactly as they do today”. That’s because users either don’t access age-restricted content, or their internal age assurance systems determine the user is an adult.

One of their previous vendors had a security breach that exposed 70,000 user photo IDs, which does not inspire confidence.

They say they will roll out more verification options, such as credit card verification. They will also be transparent about which third party vendors they use.

They are also building a new “spoiler channel” option, so community owners don’t need to age-gate channels with “spoilers, politics, and heavier conversations” to give members a choice about seeing them.

There will be more information as they roll out changes globally.

Amazon Wishlists May Expose Your Address

You should definitely not share your Amazon wishlist publicly or with anyone you don't trust, because your mailing address may be exposed. If this affects you, you should have received an email from Amazon this week.

Amazon no longer lets you opt out from receiving items from 3rd party sellers. To do that, Amazon must share your shipping address, and that could be revealed to the purchaser as well.

Amazon suggests using a PO box or non-residential address if you share your Wishlist publicly.

Flow For Images

At Google I/O in May 2025, Google launched Flow, their AI filmmaking platform. This week it got a major redesign and a shift to image generation.

Google says “you’ve told us you're looking for more than just a video generation tool. We hear you: Today we're introducing a redesigned interface that brings image generation to the forefront, offers flexible asset management, and gives more precise control over editing.”

Google Labs is shutting down Whisk and ImageFX and moving “their best capabilities” into Flow. In March you can opt in to have your projects and media from those platforms migrated over to your Flow library.

The Flow library is also getting an update, with the ability to group your images and videos into collections, and easier searching and sorting.

For editing you can use the new lasso tool to select an area or draw on images then use natural language prompts to edit. Plus there are now buttons to extend clips or add or remove objects.

Try Google Flow. Free accounts have limited access.

(This sounds very much like a full-fledged filmmaking platform probably didn’t have broad enough appeal, hence adding other AI image creation tools.)

Nano Bana 2

Google Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) is now available in the Gemini app with new templates to get you started. It’s also available in AI Mode and Lens in Google Search, AI Studio and Google Cloud (demos), Flow, and Google Ads.

The latest model includes:

“Real-world knowledge” that uses information and images from web search
A wider range of image resolutions (from 512px to 4K)
More legible text and translations
Maintains up to 5 consistent characters and 10 objects in a single workflow.
It’s also better at following instructions and has improved image “aesthetics”.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

Portraits is a Google experiment that creates a “coach” chatbot based on an expert’s writings (mostly self-help sorts of things). You can try Portraits here. YouTube started testing creator Portraits in December. The most recent addition on YouTube is Evan Carmichael, who teaches people to “believe in yourself.” If you are in the US and at least 18, you can give it a try. It is not available if you are signed into a Brand Account channel.

Is YouTube the “future of news?” YouTube thinks so.

YouTube Creator Liaison and “YouTube Insider” Rene Ritchie was on the vidIQ podcast to talk about AI-generated and “Inauthentic” content (YouTube wants your unique voice, no matter the tools), getting your content discovered, changing niches, shadow bans and more.

TubeBuddy (video SEO and analytics platform) has been acquired by GameSquare. Tubefilter reports: GameSquare just bought TubeBuddy. So...what is GameSquare?

Twitch will no longer enforce their policy against multi-platform streamers who display a Combined Chat (from multiple platforms).

StreamYard improved their AI Clip tool, which is now “3x faster”.

Web Publishers

There was an AdSense issue between February 12th and 18th that prevented anchor ads from being closed on iOS devices. That may result in a significant increase in click through rate. AdSense doesn’t mention this, but I suspect that will result in higher than usual invalid activity deductions for February.

Social Media

Instagram for TV has expanded to Google TV devices in the US. This launched in December for Amazon Fire TV. It lets you watch Reels on the big screen, with recommended channels and search.

Bluesky now supports Bandcamp embeds. You can play songs directly in Bluesky (if you enable external media).

If you connect your podcast to your Threads account, you can now add rich link previews. Upload a video clip, and select the “add podcast link” option to add a preview card that links to the full episode. Threads supports links to podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and iHeart.

John Oliver on why Twitter/X is worse than you think: Twitter: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Communication and Collaboration

Google has updated the video player in the Google Drive app for iOS. This change launched for Android last year.

In Chrome for desktop, you can save PDF files directly to Google Drive. They can be found in the “Saved from Chrome” folder.

More AI Updates

The lesson here is “don’t trust what AI chatbots tell you” and maybe “have a blog”. BBC reporter Thomas Germain writes: I hacked ChatGPT and Google's AI - and it only took 20 minutes. He wrote a post on his personal blog about how he’s a top competitive hot dog eater, and both Gemini and ChatGPT quickly incorporated that information (Claude suggested it wasn’t true). This makes it easy for spammers and unsavory sorts to spread false information.

And it should go without saying that you shouldn’t rely on AI for health decisions: ‘Unbelievably dangerous’: experts sound alarm after ChatGPT Health fails to recognise medical emergencies (even though you can submit your medical records).

Opal, Google’s experimental AI mini-app creator now lets you add agents for interactive experiences.

Google Translate has new Gemini features that can better translate idioms and colloquial phrases with an “understand” button for more information. It also lets you ask follow-up questions. This is available in the US and India in the Translate app (and will be available soon on the web).

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