Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not. According to a story that has often been repeated in the media, Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in San Francisco. Most content is generated by individuals, including collaborations between YouTubers and corporate sponsors. Since its purchase by Google, YouTube has expanded beyond the core website into mobile apps, network television, and the ability to link with other platforms. Google expanded YouTube's business model from generating revenue through advertisements alone to offering paid content such as movies and exclusive content explicitly produced for YouTube.
Creators are taking over TV – here are 10 tips
YouTube has enabled people to more directly engage with government, such as in the CNN/YouTube presidential debates (2007) in which ordinary people submitted questions to U.S. presidential candidates via YouTube video, with a techPresident co-founder saying that Internet video was changing the political landscape. The study also concluded that YouTube was becoming an important platform by which people acquire news. A Pew Research Center study reported the development of "visual journalism", in which citizen eyewitnesses and established news organizations share in content creation. By early 2013, Billboard had announced that it was factoring YouTube streaming data into calculation of the Billboard Hot 100 and related genre charts.
- In July 2023, OpenAI unveiled an Android app, initially rolling it out in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, and the United States.
- On November 1, 2016, the dispute with GEMA was resolved, with Google content ID being used to allow advertisements to be added to videos with content protected by GEMA.
- A Pew Research Center study reported the development of “visual journalism”, in which citizen eyewitnesses and established news organizations share in content creation.
- The study also concluded that YouTube was becoming an important platform by which people acquire news.
- As of July 2025, Science expects authors to release in full how AI-generated content is used and made in their work.
- In late October 2023, YouTube began cracking down on the use of ad blockers on the platform.
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- As of December 2024update the Playables catalog has over 130 games in various genres, including trivia, action and sports.
- The move was seen as an attempt to ensure that videos being monetized did not lead to controversy, but was criticized for penalizing smaller YouTube channels.
- These limitations may be revealed when ChatGPT responds to prompts including descriptors of people.
- A 2025 Sentio University survey of 499 LLM users with self-reported mental health conditions found that 96.2% use ChatGPT, with 48.7% using it specifically for mental health support or therapy-related purposes.
- YouTube typically takes 45 percent of the advertising revenue from videos in the Partner Program, with 55 percent going to the uploader.
- In November 2016, YouTube released YouTube VR, a dedicated version with an interface for VR devices, for Google’s Daydream mobile VR platform on Android.
- In the 2020s, the rapid advancement of deep learning-based generative artificial intelligence models raised questions about the copyright status of AI-generated works, and about whether copyright infringement occurs when such are trained or used.
As part of YouTube Music, Universal and YouTube signed an agreement in 2017, which was followed by separate agreements other major labels, which gave the company the right to advertising revenue when its music was played on YouTube. On November 1, 2016, the dispute with GEMA was resolved, with Google content ID being used to allow advertisements to be added to videos with content protected by GEMA. In April 2012, a court in Hamburg ruled that YouTube could be held responsible for copyrighted material posted by its users.
The future of entertainment is here: see what’s next on YouTube
These include, among many others, writing and debugging computer programs, composing music, scripts, fairy tales, and essays, answering questions (sometimes at a level exceeding that of an average human test-taker), and generating business concepts. The laborers were exposed to toxic and traumatic content; one worker described the assignment as "torture". These labels were used to train a model to detect such content in the future.
In 2016, YouTube introduced an option to watch every video on the platform in 360-degree mode with Snoop Dogg. The next year, YouTube added a music button to the video bar that played samples from "Sandstorm" by Darude. In 2014, YouTube announced that it was responsible for the creation of all viral video trends, and revealed previews of upcoming trends, such as "Clocking", "Kissing Dad", and "Glub Glub Water Dance". A video of two presenters announcing the nominated videos streamed live for 12 hours.
In January 2010, YouTube introduced a film rentals service, available in many countries, and TV shows can be bought in several countries. In November 2009, YouTube launched a version of "Shows" available to UK viewers, offering around 4,000 full-length shows from more than 60 partners. YouTube had $29.2 billion ads revenue in 2022, up by $398 million from the prior year. According to Google, YouTube had made US$15.1 billion in ad revenue in 2019, in contrast to US$8.1 billion in 2017 and US$11.1 billion in 2018. Google first published exact revenue numbers for YouTube in February 2020 as part of Alphabet's 2019 financial report. In May 2013, YouTube introduced a trial scheme of 53 subscription channels with prices ranging from $0.99 to $6.99 a month.
It currently uses GPT-5.1, a generative pre-trained transformer (GPT), to generate text, speech, and images in response to user prompts. YouTube Play Buttons, a part of the YouTube Creator Rewards, are a recognition by YouTube of its most popular channels. According to TubeMogul, in 2013 a pre-roll advertisement on YouTube (one that is shown before the video starts) cost advertisers on average $7.60 per 1000 views. Google stated that it had "begun an extensive review of our advertising policies and have made a public commitment to put in place changes that give brands more control over where their ads appear". The government demanded assurances that its advertising would "be delivered safely and appropriately".
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On May 25, 2023, YouTube announced that they would be shutting down this feature on June 26, 2023. On October 15, 2024, the platform officially extended the length of shorts to 3 minutes. In May 2022, Google announced that they would be shutting down YouTube Go in August 2022. On February 1, 2018, it was rolled out in 130 countries worldwide, including Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, and Iraq. In September 2022, YouTube TV began allowing customers to purchase most of its premium add-ons (excluding certain services such as NBA League Pass and AMC+) without an existing subscription to its base package.
TrendForce market intelligence estimated that 30,000 Nvidia GPUs (each costing approximately $10,000–15,000) were used to power ChatGPT in 2023. In July 2023, OpenAI unveiled an Android app, initially rolling it out in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, and the United States. On August 19, 2025, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Go in India, a low-cost subscription plan priced at ₹399 per month, offering ten times higher message, image generation, and file-upload limits, double the memory span compared to the free version, and support for UPI payments. The Pro launch coincided with the release of the o1 model, providing unlimited access to o1 and advanced voice mode.
In September 2016, after introducing an enhanced notification system to inform users of these violations, YouTube's policies were criticized by prominent users, including Philip DeFranco and Vlogbrothers. The move was seen as an attempt to ensure that videos being monetized did not lead to controversy, but was criticized for penalizing smaller YouTube channels. YouTube typically takes 45 percent of the advertising revenue from videos in the Partner Program, with 55 percent going to the uploader. The video was retracted after it was found that the ads had been triggered by the use of copyrighted content in the video. In early April 2017, the YouTube channel h3h3Productions presented evidence claiming that a Wall Street Journal article had fabricated screenshots showing major brand advertising on an offensive video containing Johnny Rebel music overlaid on a Chief Keef music video, citing that the video itself had not earned any ad revenue for the uploader.
The company announced a slew of generative AI-powered features to counter OpenAI and Microsoft. GPT-5 was launched on August 7, 2025, and is publicly accessible through ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and via OpenAI's API. Later reports showed the bug was much more severe than initially believed, with OpenAI reporting that it had leaked users' "first and last name, email address, payment address, the last four digits (only) of a credit card number, and credit card expiration date". Shortly after the bug was fixed, users could not see their conversation history.
YouTube Premium (formerly Music Key and YouTube Red) is YouTube's premium subscription service. In 2012, clicking on the image of a DVD next to the site logo led to a video about a purported option to order every YouTube video for home delivery on DVD. The next year, the site celebrated its "100th anniversary" with a range of sepia-toned silent, early 1900s-style films, including a parody of Keyboard Cat. In 2010, YouTube temporarily released a "TEXTp" mode which rendered video imagery into ASCII art letters "in order to reduce bandwidth costs by $1 per second." The next year, when clicking on a video on the biggerz casino bonus main page, the whole page turned upside down, which YouTube claimed was a "new layout".
