YouTube is AI-generating replies for creators on its platform so they could more easily and quickly respond to comments on their videos, but it appears that these AI-generated replies can be misleading, nonsensical, or weirdly intimate.
YouTube announced that it would start rolling out “editable AI-enhanced reply suggestions” in September, but thanks to a new video uploaded by Clint Basinger, the man behind the popular LazyGameReviews channel, we can now see how they actually work in the wild. For years, YouTube has experimented with auto-generated suggested replies to comments that work much like the suggested replies you might have seen in your Gmail, allowing you to click on one of three suggested responses like “Thanks!” or “I’m on it,” which might be relevant, instead of typing out the response yourself. “Editable AI-enhanced reply suggestions” on YouTube work similarly, but instead of short, simple replies, they offer longer, more involved answers that are “reflective of your unique style and tone.” According Basinger’s video demoing the feature, it does appear the AI-generated replies are trained on his own comments, at times replicating previous comments he made word for word, but many of the suggested replies are strangely personal, wrong, or just plain weird.