YouTube's Massive Uncontrolled AI Plagiarism Problem

Source: History Dose

Content plagiarism on YouTube has been a problem for almost as long as the channel has been monetising (see for example: Jonathan Bailey, 'YouTube’s Plagiarism Problem Not everything that glitters is original...' Plagiarism Today April 27, 2018 ). This results in a situation that increases our difficulties in archaeological outreach to the public. See for example the excellent presentation of Andy Burgess [Faultline], 'Why All Educational Videos Are the Same', Oct 20, 2022; see also the video by veritas et caritas, "History Youtube has a James Somerton problem" Dec 10, 2023).

The issuer is that in 'edutainment', many creators (for example on YouTube) copy each other’s content. This is not always done word-for-word, but by following the same scripts, topics, and even visual styles. The reason for this is that the platform rewards familiar, high-performing formulas. The Algorithm favours videos that resemble already successful ones, so creators tend to imitate rather than innovate. As a result, much of YouTube 'edutainment' ends up feeling repetitive: the same subjects are presented in nearly identical ways, leading to a kind of algorithm-driven plagiarism where originality is discouraged.

For some time now, the problem has been taking on a new form, and one that is should be extremely worrying to those of us who want the past to get a reliably- informed view of the past. I came across this short text by Chris and Joe from the YouTube channel History Dose pointing out this worrying trend ( 7 hours ago - slightly edited)

A rant about YouTube's Massive AI Plagiarism Problem.
Virtually every semi-successful video on YouTube is being scanned by AI content farms, copied, and regurgitated en masse within days of the release of the original episode. Often, the titles, narration and images are AI-altered JUST enough to make it hard for the creator to issue a copyright claim.

Are these passionate fellow creators taking inspiration to transform or add something to videos on the same subjects? Nope. These are machine-run content mills that are spreading fake history, ripping off actual creators, and ruining your algorithm. Even the ones that don't get many views mess with recommendations.

I mean it when I say pretty much every creator is being affected. Swipe to see videos by my friends North02 and HistoryTime, also getting plagiarized. I encourage you to test it for yourself. Go search up the exact title of a reasonably popular video by any creator you watch (doesn't have to be history-related), and you're very likely to find several rip-off AI videos leeching views from them.

What can we do about it? Well, YouTube currently has zero guardrails to stop its platform from cannibalizing itself in this way. Two things come to mind in the meantime.

1.) SHARE THIS POST. I'm not even sure how much YouTube realizes it is undercutting the very creators that sustain its platform.

2.) SUPPORT REAL CREATORS. You can support our human-made history education, art, research, narration at our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/c/HistoryDose But I also encourage you to consider financially supporting any of your favorite creators on this platform.

This issue has not gone unnoticed. It is discussed in videos such as 'Established Context's "How AI Slop is Quietly Breaking YouTube" Jul 7, 2025.

Or another one: Vanessa Wingårdh, "The Internet is Dying: AI, Bots, and The End of Human Content" Aug 1, 2025.

"The internet was once a vast digital frontier of endless human created content. The World Wide Web connected us, until corporations decided their profit margins mattered more than Tim Berners-Lee's vision of an open web. Now we're trapped on the same few websites, force fed algorithmic content and AI generated slop. Anonymous users predicted this years ago with what they called Dead Internet Theory. From bot armies manipulating conversations to AI generated content flooding every platform, the internet we once knew is disappearing". *

See also another of her videos: Vanessa Wingårdh "Real or AI? The Internet Is Now Impossible to Trust", Jul 24, 2025.

It's concerning how rapidly AI is become a plagiarism machine used almost exclusively for deepfaking things. It is possible that, instead of the results of the work of human content-creators, soon there will be more AI content on YouTube, produced by "V-Tubers" (virtual creators), fabricating what is in effect just 20 minute spam generated to garner click ad revenue. The same seems to be happening to book authors on Amazon also. YouTube has announced that on July 15, 2025, it had updated its systems in a way that it hopes will better target “inauthentic” content, specifically mass-generated or repetitive videos. The mechanisms, effects, who it will impact and what the actual outcome will be is as yet unclear.

For now, there are a number of indicators of an AI-generated video that we can look out for (see also info online such as here):

1. The thumbnail contains sensational label like "THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING" etc.
2. The video itself tends to be about 20 minutes long
3. Right through the video, the images used are generic stock content that are only losely related to what is being presented (some human creators do this too),
4. Text to speech is often a dead giveaway. The generic voiceover often has inexplicable pauses (misreading a line-break in the script?) or weird mis-pronouncications.

An issue is that almost as soon as you click on one, it’s too late. It becomes part of your viewing history and as a result, the Algorithm keeps suggesting similar content. The only option is to constantly select “do not recommend this channel” (FYI, in case you don't know, click on the 3 dot menu next to a recommended video and you will see the option). It's not quite that bad, in fact, it takes at least 3 seconds of watching a video for it to register in your watch history, and you can delete your watch data, thus making YT forget you ever watched it.


By the way: History Dose ("Written and Illustrated by Humans")

Description
Just two brothers, Chris the history grad and Joe the artist, teaming up to capture the wonder, terror, and beauty of the past. Chris holds a B.A. with honors in history from Cornell University (2018). He writes and narrates each script and posts a bibliography of academic sources in each video description, more recently including fully footnoted scripts so that interested viewers may source specific claims and learn more. Joe is a digital artist who manually creates each piece with a stylus and pad, honing his craft in the medium since 2017. Together, we are History Dose®.

* Wikipedia: "The dead Internet theory is a conspiracy theory which asserts that since around 2016 the Internet has consisted mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content manipulated by algorithmic curation, as part of a coordinated and intentional effort to control the population and minimize organic human activity".