Your YouTube Shorts feed is about to get a lot more artificial. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan revealed in his annual letter today that creators will soon be able to make Shorts using their own AI likenesses—essentially letting them film themselves without being in front of the camera. The feature arrives sometime in 2026, though YouTube is keeping the specifics close to the vest for now.
Your YouTube Shorts feed might soon look like a deep fake convention. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan dropped the news in his annual letter today: creators will be able to make Shorts featuring their own AI likenesses sometime this year. That means your favorite YouTuber could theoretically film a Shorts video without ever touching a camera or appearing on screen.
Mohan didn't spill the details—a YouTube spokesperson told The Verge that more information on the launch date and how the feature actually works is coming soon. But it's the latest addition to what's becoming an increasingly ambitious AI arsenal for creators on the platform. YouTube is also rolling out AI tools that let creators make games from text prompts (already in closed beta) and experiment with music generation.
If that sounds familiar, it's because YouTube has been quietly stacking AI features for creators over the past couple of years. The platform already offers AI chatbots for channel analytics, AI-powered auto-dubbing that can translate and dub videos in different languages, and AI-generated video clips for Shorts. These aren't niche features either—Shorts alone is averaging 200 billion daily views, which makes it one of the most important experimental grounds for AI-generated content in the world.
But here's where it gets complicated. While YouTube is opening up these creative possibilities, the platform is also grappling with an influx of AI spam and low-quality generated content. Mohan's letter acknowledges this tension head-on. "Over the past 20 years, we've learned not to impose any preconceived notions on the creator ecosystem," he wrote. But "with this openness comes a responsibility to maintain the high quality viewing experience that people want."
YouTube has already had to deal with some ugly examples of what happens when AI tools aren't managed carefully. The platform previously shut down channels pumping out fake movie trailers and other AI-generated slop designed purely to game the algorithm. Mohan says YouTube is "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." The real test will be whether those guardrails can keep up with creator adoption if AI likenesses blow up.
