YouTube's algorithm recommends YouTube Shorts videos containing violence, horror, sexual innuendo, or explicit body focus to children after they watch typical children's content for 20 minutes. If a user clicks on one of these videos, they end up with a feed where on average one-third of the content is of the same type. com and searching for popular children's terms like 'barnesanger', 'bluey', 'cocomelon', 'eventyr', 'peppa pig', 'mario', 'minecraft', 'sabeltann', 'vennebyen', and 'badebussen'.
Five tests were conducted for each search term using a Python script to automate a browser with a unique Norwegian IP address for each test. The categories for evaluating videos were inspired by the criteria used by Medietilsynet, the Norwegian Media Authority, to assess whether video content is harmful to children. More than 200 organizations and individual experts, including child psychiatrists and educators, signed a letter to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan and Google CEO Sundar Pichai expressing serious concern about the spread of AI-generated videos on YouTube and YouTube Kids.
The letter argues that AI-generated content harms children's development by distorting their sense of reality, overwhelming their learning processes, hijacking their attention, extending online time, and displacing offline activities necessary for healthy development. It calls on YouTube to clearly label all AI-generated content, ban AI-generated content on YouTube Kids, bar AI-generated videos from being recommended to users under 18, and implement an option for parents to turn off AI-generated content even if their child searches for it. YouTube's current policy requires creators to disclose when realistic content is made with altered or synthetic media, including generative AI, but not when it is clearly unrealistic, such as animated videos or those with special effects.
YouTube is actively working on developing labels for YouTube Kids. YouTube spokesperson Boot Bullwinkle stated that YouTube has high standards for content in YouTube Kids, including limiting AI-generated content in the app to a small set of high-quality channels, and provides parents the option to block channels.