There is a bug in Youtube’s AI filter that is causing some videos to flicker. The content creator have no idea that is happening and no way to opt out. If you have Epilepsy it is recommended that you watch out for these situations
Also as content creators dont know this may be happening, if you find these issues you should try to contact the respective content creator and let them know this is happening on your specific device. Again, its so random it may only happen on some devices
I’m the author of my video content, not YouTube.
I carefully produce and render it, carefully ensuring it meets the quality level I require, and then I upload it.
I assume YouTube will transcode it, sure, but I assume they have expert engineers who have tailored the transcoding system to maintain the highest possible video quality whilst hitting whatever their filesize goals are.
At no point should AI be applied to alter the content of my video in any way, especially without my consent. That’s ridiculous.
Sadly YouTube owns your content, not you.
I mean, not really. You can apply for copyright on your content that has been posted to YouTube. If you don’t like how YouTube is distributing your content, applying AI filters to it or whatever, you can take it down. If you want to upload your content somewhere else, you can. You own your content, YouTube just distributes it how they see fit.
The bassist youtuber Davie504 mentioned of being aged in recent videos, it’s bonkers.
I would not be able to watch YouTube without an ad blocker if I had epilepsy. Full stop.
I don’t think I even thought about that.
When I load up the YouTube app on my Apple TV — the only place I watch YouTube “as Google intended” — that is, no ad blocker, their official app, the ball is 100% in their court — it flickers before even getting to the account picker. My wife and I both use it, so we both have our accounts loaded in. Opening my account, it flickers before showing me the videos page with all the videos. Opening a video, the ads flicker. The timer jumps down faster, which is nice, but it’s also very distracting. Once the ad ends or I “skip” (you know, sometimes the ad just ends and the content loads; other times, the ad just keeps going forever and you have to manually skip), the video itself skips and flashes a bit for a second or two and then it’s fine.
I get none of these problems on my Macs, where I watch in Firefox with an ad blocker. The YouTube app annoyed me on my iPhone, so I deleted it. I access YouTube in Safari where I have content blockers. We have uBlock Origin on iOS now, and it works. Videos just play in Safari, I don’t think I’ve seen an ad yet. I also bought AdGuard and Wipr 2. They all do the same thing, they use Safari’s filter feature to block ads with lists they get from various places. They can cancel one another out, so you have to pick one. Presently I’m rolling with uBO and it works. I’m not sure it blocks all ads like I do on the desktop, but I generally do not see them. On my Android phone (old Galaxy S10, only works on WiFi, it’s a cosplay prop), I have Firefox with uBlock Origin, as one does when they use Android, because one can.
But the Apple TV is Google’s domain. They get to sling all the ads they want. And the flickering is freakin’ insane. I’m strongly considering looking up a gently used Intel-era Mac mini to replace it with, and just put media apps or web apps in the Dock and replace the Apple TV Remote with an old Logitech K400+ I have laying around. I boxed it because it was having issues with Windows, but now that I’m a Mac user, connecting it via a dongle (since MacBooks don’t support USB-A), it works perfectly!
So, I don’t know what this AI filter is, but YouTube “as Google intended” would be fucking dangerous for epilepsy patients and I would love to see Google sued over it, but I have no financial damage myself, so I couldn’t be the one to do it.
Get a Fire Stick! They’re like $40 and you can get all the normal streaming apps, but you can also sideload apps. My two favorites: Stremio+Torrential+Real Debrid, and SmartTube.
SmartTube is YouTube with ad-block, sponsorblock, custom settings, everything you could want
If you have epilepsy, watch out so you don’t randomly see something that could potentially kill you.
Great job google.
People take epilepsy risk a bit far. I mean I get it they don’t want to kill someone but people with epilepsy know how much flickering is required to be a problem and honestly it’s a lot. That flickering would be extremely annoying but it’s not going to be dangerous to me.
Although I must say I’ve never actually seen this issue and I watch a lot of YouTube because of my job which requires me to be on call but not actually doing anything.
There is an issue that YouTube occasionally has where a video will lock up for a couple of seconds and it always locks up at exactly the same point, and always recovers at exactly the same point, but that’s a very rare issue, isn’t flashing so is unlikely to cause epilepsy, and has been around for years now so is nothing to do with AI.
FWIW, photosensitive epilepsy is typically only triggered at flash rates between 3-30 hertz. The rate of flashing shown is extremely unlikely to cause seizures even in generally susceptible individuals.
I don’t know the type of flashes causes by this glitch but the post specifically warns for epilepsy.
That part of the post might be wrong, that’s completely fair and i trust you have less to gain from lying versus a post craving clicks.
Though my point is, if it is dangerous. What are they supposed to look out for? The “recommendation” should be google stop doing this shit that puts people at random risk.
If it’s just annoying, then its just a glitch, the same for other photosensitive but not suffering epilepsy people.
Ahahaha. A title cautioning not to watch YouTube with the description of the situation being… a YouTube video.
I’m avoiding YouTube so for others like me that want more info here’s a BBC article on the filter itself (not the failure mode):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20250822-youtube-is-using-ai-to-edit-videos-without-permission
YouTube has secretly used artificial intelligence (AI) to tweak people’s videos without letting them know or asking permission. Wrinkles in shirts seem more defined. Skin is sharper in some places and smoother in others. Pay close attention to ears, and you may notice them warp
And an Invidious link that lets you view the video:
Yeah it’d be nice if people would start uploading to peertube…
Yeah, YouTube is really entrenched.
It’s not that hard to set your peertube account to autoupload any YouTube channel but we only get away with the IP issues while peertube is small so it’s not very sustainable.
I wish more of the creators that have ethical issues with the Trump administration’s actions would acknowledge that Google is enabling and actively supporting (at least through larger than usual donations to) the Trump administration and then choose to upload anywhere else, even if they keep uploads in two places. I wonder if they lose more IP control on peertube, it seems unlikely given the alternative is Google. I’ve tried to message a few creators but I think the larger ones have either contracts of fond memories of the community that they grew from.
To be fair, they also have little to gain now besides a slight feeling of doing something good but any alternative has to start from somewhere and need to get momentum.
