Neal Mohan
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Big Technology Podcast · YouTube CEO Neal Mohan: Why We're Betting On AI And Not Afraid Of It
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Does YouTube Mind If a Creator Succeeds on Netflix?
Neal Mohan says a creator who finds success off YouTube because of success on YouTube is a positive outcome. Asked about Netflix taking YouTube podcasts and keeping those creators off YouTube, he treats that contest as an old one. Other platforms have made runs at YouTube creators before.
Mr. Beast is the example. Those videos take enormous effort and creativity every week, and the same audience has carried a game show, a book, and more outside YouTube. At Mr. Beast's offices, one of the first rules is YouTube first, because YouTube is the home and the source of the rest. That is the conversation he generally has with creators.
YouTube's job is to make creators feel that YouTube is still t
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Will AI Answers Take Views Away From YouTube Creators?
Neal Mohan says YouTube has not seen AI answers cut consumption of the videos they draw on, at least not yet. Ask on YouTube is video-forward and creator-forward. It surfaces those videos rather than replacing them with text.
A creator can put a lot of production value into a 15-minute video on how to run a marathon, then watch a search print that advice as text with no view on the video. A lot of that learning still needs the picture. Fixing a garage door is a step-by-step that text only partly covers, so Ask YouTube brings the video forward. Across YouTube, this kind of search is a sliver next to watching a documentary on a television screen.
The new answers can also pull up a stretch th
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How Is YouTube Handling AI Slop?
Neal Mohan says YouTube handles AI slop as low-quality content, not as AI itself, and it takes that problem seriously. He does not want YouTube Shorts, or any other YouTube surface, to turn into slop. A video is not penalized purely because it is AI.
He does not sort AI-generated content into a pile he wants more of and a pile he wants less of. AI can be a means to a creative end. What rises to the top is a new idea that resonates with a creator's fans. Content rules and audience response stay the test, whether or not a tool made the video.
What succeeds is content the audience responds to and that the creator stands behind. It should carry what the creator stands for editorially, and it s
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How Does YouTube Count a View Now?
Neal Mohan says YouTube now counts a public view the same way on Shorts and on other videos. Alex Kantrowitz said his own uploads looked about 30 or 40 percent higher than before. The change makes those public counts uniform.
Until very recently, Shorts were counted differently from on-demand videos. A public count could differ because a video ran past a certain length or played horizontally. Neal Mohan says you could argue that split was not right. YouTube had already changed the Shorts count a year ago or a couple of years ago, he does not remember which, and the same method now applies across YouTube.
In YouTube Studio, creators still see engaged views, which keeps the older sense of a
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Why Does YouTube Put AI Into YouTube Studio?
Neal Mohan says a lot of YouTube's AI goes into YouTube Studio, because creators use the tools there every day to connect with an audience. Advertising for brands and viewers, and the work YouTube does for creators and viewers, share one requirement: it has to be worth the viewer's time.
Viewers have lots of things coming at them, and the volume is only increasing, so time on YouTube has to be a good use of that time. Giving creators tools for their audiences is a major focus. Much of the work sits outside the features people see in the main YouTube app on a phone, on a desktop, and on a television screen, and lives in YouTube Studio. YouTube brings the same tools and capabilities to brands
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Why Does Neal Mohan Focus on Creators and Fans?
Neal Mohan focuses on the long-term human storytelling connection between creators and fans because he thinks the deep human desire behind it is not going to change in whatever world comes in the future. YouTube's place in it depends on whether YouTube can remain core to the connection.
One summer was a great example. Justin Bieber live streamed at Coachella on YouTube. 1.7 billion people all over the world watched some FIFA content on YouTube during six weeks. Markiplier took his audience along on his channel while he built a movie, then released it in thousands of theaters all over the country and became the number one movie in Hollywood over the weekend of his release.
The Coachella liv
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Has AI Increased Uploads on YouTube?
Neal Mohan says YouTube's upload growth is not necessarily tied directly to AI tools. YouTube keeps growing, and new creators still find an audience every day. He is not aware of an inflection point where AI tools suddenly changed how much people upload.
The most important creator is the person hitting the upload button for the very first time today. A first upload is the lifeblood of YouTube, the opening for a new creator to start. Millions of people are trying their hand at it as YouTube has become a cultural phenomenon, and the rise in creators stands apart from AI. AI does make some content creation easier and has democratized it further, the same way YouTube did in its early days 20 ye
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Why Does YouTube Give Creators AI Tools?
Neal Mohan wants content on YouTube that connects with viewers and fans all over the world. YouTube is the world's most efficient connector of a creative idea or creative person with an audience, no matter where the audience is, and he wants more of that content. AI is the current technology a creator can use to make it. YouTube's responsibility is to give creators access to the tools, and the creator chooses which tools to use and how to use them.
Viewers come to YouTube looking for a human story or a human connection, and that type of content tends to rise to the top. AI is not different from earlier technology that enabled creativity, including the synthesizer and the drum machine. The t
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How Does YouTube Use AI for Creators?
Neal Mohan says YouTube uses AI to build the world's best stage for creators, so they can grow an audience and a business more efficiently and faster. Most of the people who work for him are software engineers. Someone walking the halls of YouTube hears creator, podcaster, or artist about 100 times a day, because creators are the people on that stage.
YouTube works with Google DeepMind every day to make the stage better. Dynamic thumbnails let a creator attach multiple thumbnails to one video, depending on who the audience is. A-B testing has existed for a while, and AI puts it in the hands of every creator. Hitting the plus button on YouTube to create videos runs on models like Omni, and t
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How Big Is YouTube Compared to Netflix?
Alex Kantrowitz says YouTube is a $60 billion annual business, dramatically bigger than Netflix at $45 billion. More than 2 billion users are on YouTube globally, it is growing 13% a year, and it accounts for 14% of all US streaming. A billion daily hours of YouTube are watched on TV alone, and YouTube has paid out $100 billion to creators over the past four years.
Neal Mohan treats that picture as accurate. YouTube celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. It began as a place to upload videos and is now a streaming service where two billion plus people come every single day, connecting with millions and millions of creators.
Fandom on YouTube every day creates the business opportunities