At 20 years old, YouTube is moving into AI-generated video in a shift that could change the platform’s identity.
Google decided early that video belonged in search and launched Google Video in 2005. That effort focused on licensing deals with entertainment companies and put strict limits on what users could upload, and it failed. By contrast, a tiny startup run by a handful of employees working above a San Mateo, California, pizzeria took off by letting anyone upload goofy clips and not worrying excessively about who owned every piece of footage. Google bought that year-old company in 2006 for $1.65 billion, intending to sort out the intellectual-property questions afterward. The purchase price was about a billion dollars more than the company’s valuation at the time, a premium that now looks like one of the great bargains in tech history.
Today YouTube stands as perhaps the most successful video property on the planet. It leads in music and podcasting, and more than half of viewing time now happens on living-room screens. Since 2021 the company has paid creators over $100 billion. One estimate from MoffettNathanson analysts cited by Variety suggests that if YouTube were its own public company, it might be worth roughly $550 billion.
The platform’s latest pivot may be its boldest. As a wholly owned unit of a parent obsessed with AI, YouTube’s anniversary updates leaned hard into artificial-intelligence features aimed at creators. Google DeepMind’s Veo 3 model has become part of the stack, and some demos pointed to a future in which the camera is replaced by the prompt. That evolution challenges YouTube’s longstanding advantage: authenticity.
I went to YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California, to speak with CEO Neal Mohan. He became CEO in 2023 when his boss, Susan Wojcicki, left her post due to a fatal cancer. Mohan’s relationship with the service predates his arrival at Google in 2008 after DoubleClick merged with the search giant. He says he was struck by the founders’ early realization about what people wanted from video. “It was not just that people were interested in sharing short clips about themselves and that it was done without a gatekeeper,” he says, “but that people were interested in watching them. That was the big bang inflection point. Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world.”
Some critics argue that breaking YouTube out of Google might free the service to pursue opportunities that a standalone company could chase. Mohan, who describes himself as a Google loyalist, rejects that premise. “I don’t believe YouTube would be where it is if it weren’t part of Google,” he says. He noted that being inside a giant company made it possible to place long-term bets on streaming and podcasting, moves that have allowed YouTube to challenge legacy media and to hold its own against platforms built around the creator economy.
He pointed to breadth as a core strength. He said YouTube’s scale gives it an edge over competitors such as Tiktok and Reels, then added: “everything from a 15-second short to a 15-minute traditional long-form YouTube video to a 15-hour livestream and everything in between,” Mohan crows.
This week’s product slate leaned on that advantage while amplifying Google’s AI capabilities. Announcements included playful tools that can paste a user’s or a friend’s body into sequences that show startling acrobatics, and features that let podcasters turn an hour of recorded conversation into something visually engaging by generating images that match the tone and subject matter.
Mohan framed the rollout as continuity with YouTube’s founding purpose. “When YouTube was born 20 years ago it was about using technology for more people to have their voice heard,” he says. “With AI, it’s the same core principle—how do we use technology to democratize creation?”
Democratizing creation is appealing on its face, but it raises a separate question about automation. One experimental feature brings Google’s Veo 3 instant-video generation onto YouTube: type “Show me 100 Indonesian dancers on the moon” and a wild sequence appears. The result prompts a familiar concern—who is doing the creative heavy lifting?
Dina Berrada, YouTube’s product director of AI generation, demoed the tools for me. My first impression was that the platform risked being flooded with AI slop. Berrada pushed back, pointing to YouTube’s experience with short-form creator content, where standout work tends to rise. “The content everyone is watching is authentic content and human content,” she says. She added that AI-made videos will be labeled, though viewers will not have a control that filters out material created with AI.
Mohan compared the arrival of AI video tools to changes in music production. “You can program a synthesizer to produce this type of music, these types of beats.” he says. “The genius is going to lie whether you did it in a way that was profoundly original or creative.” He urged skeptics not to make preemptive judgments. “Just because the content is 75 percent AI generated doesn't make it any better or worse than a video that’s 5 percent AI generated,” he says. “What's important is that it was done by a human being.”
The debate over whether an AI-heavy clip counts as a human creation will persist. I did not press Mohan for a 20-year prophecy, instead asking for his sense of the next three to five years. His answer was straightforward: more AI. “I do believe that those creation tools that you saw are going to have an impact on the type of videos and the nature of videos that are created. Our job at YouTube is to be at the cutting edge.” Let’s hope humans still make the final cut.