With deepfakes on the mind of top stars in the music industry – not to mention the wider worlds of entertainment and celebrities – YouTube’s latest announcement will come as welcome news.
The company is expanding its ‘likeness detection’ technology to the entertainment industry, via partnerships with talent agencies and management companies including CAA, UTA, WME and Untitled Management.
YouTube described the tech as the equivalent of Content ID: “It looks for AI-generated content with a participant’s likeness, like a deepfake of their face, and gives them the power to find it and request removal”.
The tech initially rolled out to YouTubers last October, then expanded to politicians and journalists in March this year. Now it’s opening up to celebrities and entertainers, even if they don’t have a YouTube channel.
Alongside all this, YouTube has been backing proposed anti-deepfakes bills in the US including the No Fakes Act and the Take It Down Act. Last April it said that US labels body the RIAA was one of its key partners “to push for a shared consensus on this legislation”.
