YouTube Takes Down Fake AI Trailer Channels Following Disney's Warning

YouTube has removed Screen Culture and KH Studio, two channels that used generative AI to create fake trailers. Both channels now return a “page isn’t available” message.

According to Deadline, these channels collectively had over 1 billion views and 2 million subscribers. They used copyrighted characters and story settings to create fake trailers for highly anticipated game and movie sequels. Their titles often suggested that the videos were made by the official production house.

Screen Culture in 2022 (Credit: Wayback Machine)

YouTube had previously suspended monetization on both channels. Once they returned, the creators began adding terms such as “fan trailer,” “parody,” and “concept trailer” to their video titles, but this practice didn’t last long.

KH Studio in July (Credit: Wayback Machine)

Recently, both channels reverted to their eye-grabbing titles, which violated YouTube’s spam and misleading-metadata policies and ultimately led to their termination, Deadline reports.

YouTube’s action comes after Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google, accusing it of “exploiting” copyrighted works through its AI tools and failing to take appropriate action against copyright violations on YouTube. As Deadline notes, Screen Culture had created 23 fake trailers for Disney’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Some of those fake trailers reportedly even outranked the official trailer when it came out.

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This week, Google rolled out a new Gemini capability that lets you check whether a video was generated by its own AI. Disney, meanwhile, has signed a three-year deal with OpenAI that lets Sora and ChatGPT users request over 200 copyrighted Disney characters in their outputs.