On its 20th birthday, YouTube is unrecognizable as the scrappy video site that began as the domain of young amateur users publishing unpolished, low-budget clips.
Commanding 2.7 billion users, including celebrities like British pop star Dua Lipa who share professional-grade content, YouTube has become the most popular way for Americans to watch TV and is expected to eclipse industry leader Disney’s (DIS.N), opens new tab media revenue this year.
On Tuesday at the company’s annual Made on YouTube product launch event, executives at the platform – owned by Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google – laid out a vision of how YouTube planned to dominate the airwaves in the coming decades: with AI.
YouTube spent much of the event championing its video creators as the future of media who could now work without constraints placed by media executives. They would be helped, instead, by a host of artificial intelligence-enabled tools that would either reimagine the production process or create new content entirely – a concept that Hollywood fought against during a months-long strike in 2023.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan and other presenters dismissed the idea, reiterating that the rapid expansion of AI capabilities would not replace the jobs of content creators.
“These are tools, and really just that,” Mohan said. “Make no mistake: no studio, network, tech company, or AI tool will own the future of entertainment.”
Rather, Mohan said, making videos on YouTube should be seen as a “viable, respectable and sustainable career path” as AI increasingly comes to the fore of the creation process over YouTube’s next 20 years.
Backed by Google’s deep pockets and market-leading AI know-how, YouTube has stretched its lead over Disney, which dominated the market for most of 2024, according to Nielsen data. YouTube captured 13.4% of U.S. viewership in July, versus 9.4% for Disney.
Analysts at MoffettNathanson recently predicted that YouTube’s revenue this year would surpass Disney’s as well. That storied entertainment company made nearly $60 billion in media revenue last year, they estimated.