YouTube is finally making its AI disclosure labels more visible as Google expands its wider AI verification efforts.
The platform has announced that it will move AI labels on both Shorts and regular videos to places where viewers can easily see them. It will also begin automatically identifying and labeling some AI-generated videos.
For regular YouTube videos, the AI label will now appear directly below the video player and above the description. The label will show “AI” next to an information icon. Until now, this disclosure was harder to find because viewers had to open the video description and look under the “How this content was made” section.
On YouTube Shorts, the same AI label will appear as an overlay on the video itself. YouTube has already tested a similar version of this label before. The company had also used an overlay on Shorts to warn viewers when a video contained altered or synthetic content.
YouTube says the goal is to give viewers important context at a glance. According to the company, this will now become the main label format for photorealistic videos and content that has been meaningfully altered or generated using AI. For videos that are unrealistic, animated, or only slightly changed, the disclosure will still be available in the expanded description.
The company is also preparing to use new internal signals to detect AI-generated videos automatically. These systems will roll out this month and help YouTube identify content that appears to use significant photorealistic AI. Creators are still required to manually disclose when they use photorealistic AI, but if they do not, YouTube may apply the AI label on its own when its systems detect it.
If a video is wrongly labeled as AI-generated, creators will be able to update the disclosure status through YouTube Studio. However, some labels will remain permanent. This includes videos made using YouTube’s own AI tools, such as Veo or Dream Screen, as well as content that includes C2PA metadata showing it was fully AI-generated.
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YouTube already uses systems such as C2PA and Google’s SynthID to detect AI-generated or synthetically altered content. With these new changes, the platform says it wants to make AI disclosures clearer for both creators and viewers, especially when videos show realistic people or photorealistic environments. YouTube also says that AI labels alone will not affect a video’s monetization or recommendation performance.
