Google’s Secret ‘Trashy Video’ AI Cleans Up YouTube Homepage
- System is key to making YouTube more of a destination online
- Homepage push improves video service’s advertising business
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YouTube is littered with extreme and misleading videos, and the company has been criticized for not doing enough to limit the dreck. But one place the Google unit has managed to clean up is YouTube’s homepage.
Behind the scenes, Google has deployed artificial intelligence software that analyzes reams of video footage without human help, deciphers troubling clips and blocks them from the homepage and home screen of the app. It’s internal name is the "trashy video classifier," according to three people familiar with the project.