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A couple of months ago, YouTube introduced a new feature – AI-generated reply suggestions that adhere to the creator's style and help communicate with their community faster. However, as with most things AI, this enhancement is not as good as you might hope.
"Comment reply suggestions: Editable AI-enhanced reply suggestions, reflective of your unique style and tone, give you a helpful starting point that you can easily customize to craft your reply to comments."
As noticed by 404 Media, Clint Basinger, a YouTuber known as Lazy Game Reviews, or LGR, demonstrated how the replies work, and it's probably what you expect if you have any meaningful experience with generative AI.
While some answers are as generic as "Thanks!" or "Appreciate it," others are at times questionable. For instance, Basinger posted a short video about a Duke Nukem G Fuel powdered energy drink, and he couldn't find the scoop to measure it, so one user said, "I wouldn’t be surprised if the scoop was buried in the powder."
In response, the AI produced, "It’s not lost, they just haven’t released the scoop yet. It’s coming soon." I don't know if this is supposed to be a joke, but I highly doubt it considering what it spews under other comments.
Someone said Basinger should have had a tighter grip on the lid while shaking the powder, and the automated response suggested, "I’ve got a whole video on lid safety coming soon, so you don’t have to worry!"
In another case, a viewer expressed their happiness about Basinger posting on his second, LGR Blerbs, channel, and YouTube offered, "It's a whole new kind of blerp," whatever that means.
My favorite was probably a reply to "I don't know who asked for this collaboration, but it's good to see a video about it." The AI suggestion was, "You can guess who didn't ask..."
"My creativity and craft stems completely from my own brain, and handing that off to some machine learning thing that mimics my style not only takes away from the enjoyment of it all for me, but it feels supremely disingenuous," Basinger told 404 Media. "The automated comments in particular come across as tone deaf, since a huge reason YouTube makes sense at all is the communication and relationship between audience and creator. I've had dozens of people say that they now second-guess every interaction with YouTubers in the comments since it could easily be a bot, a fake response."
We've seen AI generating bizarre narratives, like that time it advised to add Elmer's glue to pizza if the cheese doesn't stick. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes silly, and sometimes downright creepy: just remember when Bing was caught in an existential crisis, feeling "sad and scared."
While Basinger doesn't plan on using YouTube's AI suggestions, I imagine they will get better. The creator thinks such things should have a disclosure warning.
"I'd really prefer that YouTube not allow these types of automated replies at all unless there is a flag of some kind beside the comment saying 'This creator reply was generated by machine learning' or something like that."
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