Movie studios are cashing in on AI-generated movie trailers

Some Hollywood movie studios have asked YouTube to redirect advertising revenue from fake AI-generated movie trailers to their accounts rather than having the clips removed.

According to Deadline, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, and Sony Pictures are diverting ad revenue to themselves instead of enforcing copyright on the fabricated movie trailers and shutting down popular YouTube channels that upload these videos, such as Screen Culture and KH Studio.

Fan-made trailers have existed since the very beginning of YouTube. The current ones all use the same concept: they fuse clips from real Hollywood movies or TV shows with AI-generated content.

Many are based on unreleased movies, some are made for entertainment purposes, and others show off the capabilities of AI tools. YouTube has become saturated with these kinds of clips.

VJ4rawr2, a content creator on YouTube, explains to Deadline why AI-generated movie trailers are becoming increasingly popular.

“The majority of fan trailers today are only popular because they’ve effectively fooled people into thinking they’re real,” he says.

In fact, some of these fake movie trailers rank higher than the official trailer because YouTube’s algorithm rewards them by pushing them into its recommendation sidebar.

Some content creators believe there’s no harm in creating and publishing fan-made trailers. They help promote the upcoming movie, they argue.

Nevertheless, two days after Deadline published its investigation, Screen Culture and KH Studio could no longer monetize their content from AI-generated movie trailers.

Emails reviewed by Deadline’s editorial staff show that Warner Bros. Discovery has claimed monetization on Screen Culture’s trailer for Superman and House of the Dragon and is asking YouTube to ensure it receives the ad revenues from views. Sony Pictures and Paramount did the same with other videos.

The American actors’ union SAG-AFTRA has criticized this state of affairs and believes that the work of its members should be better protected.

“Just as SAG-AFTRA is aggressively bargaining contract terms and creating laws to protect and enforce our members’ voice and likeness rights, we expect our bargaining partners to aggressively enforce their IP from any and all AI misappropriation,” SAG-AFTRA said in a statement to Deadline.

“Monetizing unauthorized, unwanted, and subpar uses of human-centered IP is a race to the bottom. It incentivizes technology companies and short-term gains at the expense of lasting human creative endeavor,” the statement continues.

It remains unclear how much money the movie studios are collecting by redirecting ad revenues from AI-generated movie clips.