Careful what you consume on YouTube

Once upon a time, we actually celebrated fake trailers.

For one thing, these were passion projects. Imagine sitting in forums for hours, speculating about a potential Spiderman 4 in the highly popular Sam Raimi series, only for a talented editor to bring those fever dreams to life by masterfully splicing footage from other movies together.

We could not believe our eyes. It felt like our wildest theories were on display for the world to see. These videos fed fandoms, encouraging more speculation, which produced even more videos for us to drool over. Surprisingly, that attitude has persisted.

If you are as obsessive about J.R.R. Tolkien as I am, you lost your mind over that one video from a few years back that imagined what a live-action adaptation of The Silmarillion would look like. Granted, AI was still in its infancy at the time, and the trailer does not hold up today.

The images look like clay dolls. That said, seeing as a live-action adaptation of The Silmarillion is unlikely to materialize (partly because that story is downright unfilmable), that brief glimpse of one of the greatest sagas ever written was electrifying.

Unfortunately, few videos of that ilk exist. YouTube is inundated with fake trailers, but most of them suck. Like most of the fake trailers of my youth, that AI-generated Silmarillion trailer was a passion project from hardcore Tolkien fans who wanted to share their vision of a live-action Silmarillion film with other Tolkien fans.

Compare that to other videos in this genre. Better yet, open YouTube and type Avatar: Fire and Ash trailer. If you know anything about movies, your first response will be, “Hang on; Avatar: Fire and Ash has an official trailer on YouTube? Since when?”

Your confusion is justified because Avatar 3 is one of the biggest upcoming films of 2025. As such, if a trailer were out, you would know. And that is why YouTube has taken steps to oppose YouTubers who publish fake movie trailers. Channels like ‘Screen Trailers’ and ‘Royal Trailer,’ which YouTube punished back in May by suspending their ad revenue, are not creating fake trailers as a way of celebrating various fandoms.

They create fake trailers to make money. They use terminology that tricks viewers into thinking their fake trailers are official trailers, which allows them to accumulate tens of millions of views that eventually translate into millions of dollars in ad revenue. Because their videos are so outlandish, some fake trailers receive more views than real trailers.

This is why so many online users are asking Google to take action. They remember falling for that fake Thunderbolts trailer that came out months before Disney published the real thing, and it annoys them. I unknowingly watch so many fake music videos that fan creators have titled ‘Official Music Video’ to trick us.

They always leave me scratching my head because I recognize the music but the videos usually suck. What is even more unforgivable are channels that get me excited because a thumbnail suggests that my favourite band just released the music video to a song I have never heard.

Imagine assuming that a beloved musician’s latest song sucks because you don’t realize that someone made the track and its video with Artificial Intelligence. YouTube isn’t going far enough.

They should permanently disable every YouTube channel that misleads viewers about the nature of its content. But I doubt they will act anytime soon. The platform is too big. It will take a smarter algorithm than what they have now to sift through all the content people submit daily. Until then, you should endeavor to only consume content that comes from official sources.