In what I can only assume is part of the ever-growing world of AI enshitification, I began noticing an odd thing when watching videos on YouTube. When viewing content there is the primary screen with the video you are watching and on the right is a column with additional recommended videos as determined by their algorithm.
At some point in the past year, maybe more, those thumbnails stopped being a random screen capture from the video itself. Instead, something was generating the thumbnail image based on the title of the video from what I can determine. So instead of a lower resolution screen grab the thumbnail was higher resolution and not actually from the video. The first time I noticed it was pretty obvious.
You don’t have to look for more than a second or two before you realize they aren’t fake. In the case of the top thumbnail that isn’t how throwing a punch works. After hitting someone with a right hook they wouldn’t turn and fall to the left. For the bottom thumbnail the scene just looks contrived but notice how one person is clear while the other is blurry. My guess is that the algorithm thought the person being kicked would be sent spinning fast, thus blurry, while forgetting the person doing a high kick like that would also be moving quickly.
I spent time going through a few videos looking for the scenes as “captured” by the thumbnails and they weren’t there. While the scene or people depicted are typically present in the video it isn’t as seen by the generated thumbnail. This is very likely YouTube’s attempt to further entice you to watch the video by showing what appears to be a dramatic event even though it isn’t actually present.
Personally, I think this is deceptive and going to extremes to garner clicks which further monetizes the platform largely in favor of YouTube rather than the content creators. Unfortunately there is no recourse here either. If you thumbs-down the video because of it, it is unfairly punishing the content provider rather than the platform itself. I think the only recourse is for content creators to complain.
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