YouTube will soon let you create Shorts with your AI likeness

YouTube is expanding its AI tools for creators in 2026, and one of the new features coming will let creators use an AI-likeness of themselves in Shorts.

YouTube will soon let you create Shorts with your AI likeness
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TL;DR: YouTube CEO Neal Mohan reveals AI-powered features launching in 2026, including AI-generated Shorts with creator likeness protection, game and music creation tools, and enhanced content quality controls. These innovations aim to boost creativity while preventing low-quality AI content, transforming the platform's creator and viewer experience.

As part of YouTube CEO Neal Mohan's blog post on what creators can expect from the platform in 2026, the Google executive says, "AI will be a boon to the creatives who are ready to lean in." And by that, he means that creators will soon be able to create a YouTube Short with their own AI likeness later in the year.

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YouTube Shorts is one of the platform's biggest formats, with the mobile-friendly, TikTok-like section drawing around 200 billion views every day. Although YouTube hasn't explained or provided an example of what these AI-generated Shorts will look like, Neal Mohan is adamant that AI "will remain a tool for expression" and "not a replacement" for creativity.

On the plus side, there will be transparency and protections in place, with AI-generated content clearly labeled as such, and creators able to manage and protect the use of their AI likeness. So, once this new feature goes live, we shouldn't see a bunch of fake Shorts from random users featuring AI versions of popular YouTubers.

The new AI tools don't stop there, as the post also teases the ability for creators to "produce games with a simple text prompt," as well as music creation tools. And with that, the post also has a section about 'AI slop,' the term widely used to label derivative AI-generated image and video content as inferior and artistically empty compared to human-created content.

"To reduce the spread of low-quality AI content, we're actively building on our established systems that have been very successful in combatting spam and clickbait, and reducing the spread of low-quality, repetitive content," Neal Mohan says, while making it clear that seemingly odd video trends like ASMR or Let's Play mean that the YouTube team don't "impose any preconceived notions on the creator ecosystem."

Neal Mohan also confirms that over 1 million channels currently use the company's AI creation tools and that AI will effectively transform the viewer experience in the coming years.