A new feature that lets you create an AI avatar with your likeness is now live on YouTube. First introduced in a blog post earlier this year, avatars are designed to be used in shorts (provided you can still show them off), allowing you to insert yourself into video content in a way that YouTube deems safe and secure.
YouTube’s approach to combating the AI slopification of the internet and its proliferation appears to be to add more and more AI features to its platform, with this latest addition designed as a tool that gives creators more control over their digital identity. Any videos produced using avatars will feature YouTube’s AI disclosures and include visible watermarks and labels such as SynthID and C2PA.
YouTube has published in considerable depth on how to create and use an avatar in the YouTube or YouTube Create app, but here’s a brief summary of how to do it using the former. Once you open AI Playground, you’ll take a “live selfie” that will also record your voice. You can then preview your photorealistic virtual self and either proceed with it or redo the process if you’re unhappy with anything. Creating an avatar in the YouTube Create app is pretty much the same, but you’ll need to go to the My Avatar homepage first.
YouTube recommends that you hold your phone at eye level and center yourself as much as possible. Lighting is also important, as well as making sure your entire face is visible, you’re in a quiet area, and there’s no one else in the background. To create an avatar, you must also be the owner of an account and be over 18 years of age.
Once you find your favorite avatar, you simply type a prompt and wait for the AI to generate the video accordingly. Can be up to eight seconds long. Alternatively, YouTube will let you add an avatar to existing “eligible” shorts by tapping “Remix” and then “Reimagine” with your selected avatar.
Avatars can be removed or redrawn whenever you want, as can any video with your avatar. You can also limit who can remix your videos, but deleting a video containing your avatar will not remove the original video, or that avatar, from your account. YouTube will automatically remove any avatar that has not been used to create new video content for three years.
The new avatar feature will roll out gradually, and is the latest in a long series of AI-focused tools and updates that YouTube has added to the platform over the past year, including lower-resolution videos, for creators, and for search results.
<a href