Have you ever clicked on a movie trailer only to discover that it doesn’t feel like a real trailer? As it turns out, real movie studios that make actual money might be profiting from these fake trailers, which are usually made using AI.
According to reporting from Deadline, Discovery, Paramount, and Sony Pictures all redirected ad revenue from these fake trailers into their own coffers instead of enforcing copyright restrictions that would have taken the videos down. In response, SAG-AFTRA criticized the studios for profiting off of videos that use the likeness of their members without their consent.
These kinds of fan-made trailers are nothing new, but until quite recently, fans would have to edit footage from existing films together to make it look like an ad for something new. Now, thanks to AI tools like OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo, you can make these kinds of videos simply by typing in prompts.
Channels like Screen Culture have 1.4 million subscribers and 1.4 billion total views across their videos, even though most of their content is AI slop. Many of the trailers on the channel are trailers for unreleased movies that already have actual trailers. Other videos, though, are for movies that have never been announced but might seem appealing to fans of a specific franchise or film.
These studios could help to keep this AI-generated content from becoming the only thing on YouTube that people can find, but that would require them to turn off the money they’re getting. Instead, they’re misleading people about what movies are actually being released and what’s in them just to make a cheap buck.
