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Show HN: Weedout – Safari extension that hides YouTube AI-labeled videos (masteranza.github.io)

4 points by masteranza ↗ HN
I'm the developer. I built this because AI-generated conspiracy videos were getting out of control in my own YouTube feed. Weedout is a $1.99 Safari extension for macOS that removes videos YouTube labels “Made with AI” from feed, search, related videos, playlists and Shorts. It uses YouTube's label rather than AI detection, runs locally, and does not catch unlabeled videos.

Source for developers who want to fork or build: https://github.com/masteranza/weedout-for-youtube

Pull requests are not accepted; the repository is for independent forks.

85 comments

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thatmf
I wish I had this but for every website and media surface
embedding-shape
Ironically, if you had this for every website, including GitHub and HN, you wouldn't have seen this HN submission / repository :)
mikeweiss
Need the EU or California or something to create a law requiring identifying labels on all AI content
davidoduk
AI companies would lobby hard against such a law
singpolyma3
I'm more concerned about the stuff that is fraudulent then possibly legit stuff explicitly labelled as AI
ranger_danger
You can charge money for browser extensions? And people pay for them?

I'm in the wrong business.

lukeasch21
This is great, but why start with Safari and not a cross platform browser? Is there something native here that can't be done otherwise or is it just personal preference?
masteranza
There's plenty of AI blocking Chrome extensions already, however I prefer Safari for personal stuff (and hence YouTube too) and use Brave for Google-gated work related stuff.
gregjw
Safari? Of all browsers? Why not start with Chromium?
adav
I would guess it's because Safari users are happy to pay a little money for an extension whereas most other browser users wouldn't.
Schnitz
I’ve found that the AI label doesn’t necessarily mean AI slop, it just means there’s a non zero amount of AI in the video. I want to avoid AI slop but not all videos that have an AI title screen or whatever.
tadfisher
Now that the AI label exists, the creators using AI for an intro graphic or background music are probably going to stop using it.
Muskwalker
For a creator posting a video, Google gives specific guidelines on whether to tag it as AI:

"Was AI used to generate or edit your content in any of the following ways?

- Makes a real person appear to say or do something they didn’t say or do

- Alters footage of a real event or place

- Generates a realistic-looking scene that didn’t actually occur

To follow YouTube’s policy, you’re required to tell us about your use of AI. This includes realistic sounds or visuals made or edited with AI. [View examples](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/14328491)"

So oddly an intro graphic only has to be tagged as AI if it shows a real/realistic person, place, or event, but (per the examples page) apparently any AI-generated music counts.

masteranza
If so, that’s indeed a real concern...
f3408fh
Yep, it's super useless. The label is so general. Was AI used for one image in the 10 minute video? Is the voiceover AI? Is the entirety of it generated with AI? No way to know.
AmazingEveryDay
Agreed. I think instead of "AI or not", that something more nuanced is needed - perhaps a rating system inspired by the MPAA's (g, pg, pg-13 r, nc-17, x) that is used for movies.
arcfour
Yeah, I make song remixes in the style of a particular video game and while the music is completely human written (by me), I'll often have AI generated or edit the "cover art" for me so people have something to look at/chuckle at.

These videos are still marked as AI, and fairly so; however I don't think that means people should want them hidden :-(

PixelForg
> however I don't think that means people should want them hidden :-(

Sorry but no, even if the music is great I don't want to hear it if the cover was AI generated, at this point I'd happily accept even a crudely drawn cover because it is human :)

arcfour
What's the difference between me pasting a face over a body in GIMP manually and me prompting an LLM to make the same edit, faster, and better than I would by hand? They aren't particularly high-effort. The artwork isn't really the point, but I can't just upload a black video...
Planktonne
AI-generated anything sends a message of 'I do not care about quality'. You might feel that that's unfair, but it's the impression you're making on a large segment of your potential audience.
arcfour
So if I uploaded a black screen, or a black screen with text (the title of the song), that would be sending a message...that I do care about quality...? Since there was no AI?

As opposed to thinking of a play on words between the game/the original song and having an AI make the joke cover per my directions, instead of me just doing it (worse) by hand, which is "I don't care about quality?"

The whole point of the video is not the visual component, it's really just about sharing the non-AI music.

Planktonne
Pretty much, yes. People read no visuals or poor visuals as 'hobbyist who really cares about [other aspect]'; years of experience make it a familiar schema.

They read AI as 'grifter who probably doesn't care about any aspect'.

Schnitz
With music it’s especially bad because people will assume the music itself is AI generated, when in your case it isn’t.
arcfour
Yes, I'm thinking I'll stop doing it from now on since YouTube doesn't make the distinction.

I figured that LLMs saving me the 20 mins in GIMP making a silly joke filler album cover was the perfect use case... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

mechazawa
Yeah it's pretty meaningless to see the ai label below videos. Lots of obvious AI shorts and videos are unlabeled yet other videos are labeled as fully generated with AI when they are obviously not [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Pdf8iRw5E

dathinab
one problem is that algorithms to detect AI generated content are surprisingly bad

like non-AI generated animated/cartoon content is much more likely to be mistakenly labeled as AI then some somewhat realistic "looking" but for a human still clearly AI slop content

some platforms (TickTock) seem to label anything as fully AI generated iff the metadata indicates certain tools like Adobe Illustrator are used, independent on how it was been used

ungreased0675
I’d love a small local model that detects AI voices and blocks the content.
Suppafly
I'm not even sure you'd need AI for that, there are only like 3 voices that are ever used.
davidoduk
And they all have the same tone, same inflection
karim79
My pet peeve is the AI generated voices. I absolutely love the cosmology-astrophysics-space stuff. And it can be any crap if it's correct enough and entertaining enough and passive enough that I can fall asleep to it.

But once I detect that the voiceover is AI generated that shit get instablocked forever. It's an instant put-off. Do all the visuals you want with AI as long as they are reasonable but when a human (AI) voice starts to fuck with the way a word has been presented in a particular context then it just makes me want to hate everything I won't mention any names <cough> elevenlabs.

mrweasel
Many content creators on YouTube may not have English as their first language, so they turn to AI to do the voice over. The thing is, I'd rather listen to broken English read by a human than an AI voice over. The AI voices are off putting and tiresome. It's somehow hurts my brain less trying to process a Chinese person speak bad English. Alternatively for something like YouTube, add subtitles and just speak your own language is much more comfortable than the AI voice-overs.
lynx97
Depends. I take an AI generated voice over a french guy trying to talk english every day! Same for japanese. I really try, but I find these two speaker types really hard to follow and stay alert.
mrweasel
I think I'd prefer they speak their native language and add subtitles, but not AI generated ones, because the AI also can't understand a Frenchmen speaking English.
carlosjobim
They should make the videos in their own language. YouTube has subtitles.
shoobiedoo
This is especially common in Japan now. I was looking for an audio documentary of the crusades and half of them were done in squeaky anime AI voices
therealpygon
I find it interesting that you were perfectly happy with it, enjoying it even, but it was only at the point you noticed a minor word pronounced incorrectly that you flip to the extreme, hate it and want to block it to never see it again?

I’ve started calling this “AI Bipolar”, and I find it fascinating. It seems like people are offended that they were “duped” into enjoying AI generated content, but will continue on to the next lower-quality human-made content with all sorts of issues that they will completely forgive solely out of comfort that it is a human doing it.

consumer451
My only concern is that I have seen legit videos by creators on the platform for many years, with the tiny "AI (i)" label below the video. I have seen this even on channels that are not faceless.

You would think if anyone could get this right, it would be Google/YouTube, but apparently not.

onion2k
I have seen this even on channels that are not faceless.

The AI logo doesn't mean "entirely made with AI". It means "significant use of AI detected". If someone uses AI to modify the background of their video (say, to remove a detail) it'll get the label.

MarioMan
This is great. Having the option to choose whether or not to see AI content was the first thing I hoped they'd add a filter for when it was first introduced.

Just for kicks, I inverted the filter in a TamperMoneky script that only keeps the AI-generated content: https://gist.github.com/SMarioMan/32c959d79035cb421df1c69c06...

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negura
This is what they mean when they say AI amplifies inequality. If you're technically competent, you just write yourself an extension to block the slop spam, or at least pay to install one. So in the end it's rotting much more the brains of the least prepared.
GaryBluto
Considering the design and language used on the extension's website I wouldn't doubt it could've been made by someone technically unskilled.
lapcat
> So in the end it's rotting much more the brains of the least prepared.

Alternatively, you could not use YouTube, and don't rot your brain at all.

Read a book from the public library.

vivzkestrel
- stupid question: how does this sort of thing work?

- like how do you actually determine if a video was AI made or not?

- what is the algorithm used? what is the threshold for a video to be considered slop?

- what do you do? download the videos with yt-dlp split them into frames and run each frame by what?

ffsm8
From the pitch itself

> Weedout is a $1.99 Safari extension for macOS that removes videos YouTube labels “Made with AI”

So no, none of that. Blows my mind if someone pays for that

tartoran
This should be done by youtube themselves. It's so simple for them to label AI generated content so people can either look for it or avoid it.
ultrarunner
Shouldn't their presumably unlimited access to Gemini models enable them to implement things like this quickly and easily?
afavour
Yes but if it’ll lower overall video minutes viewed it’ll never make it into production.
tatoalo
> I was looking for a setting to turn off Youtube Shorts

I put out shortless [0] for the very same reason...I just hate them. This works only on Safari, but I stopped using the native app altogether a long time ago, so it wasn't that big of a jump for me :)

[0]: https://shortless.app

NotErnie
In the mobile app you can go to Settings > Time Management > Daily Limits > Shorts feed limit and set it to 0 minutes. It removes all shorts from your home feed.

If you click on a short, or the shorts tab you see "you reached your Shorts feed limit".

And if you click on the subcriptions tab theres only one section of shorts at the top and they don't show up again when you scroll down.

Izkata
> It's so simple for them to label AI generated content so people can either look for it or avoid it but they won't do it.

There is a small "AI" tag that shows up below the title when viewing the video. Don't know if it's automatic or self-applied though.

userbinator
There are tons of human-generated videos on YouTube that aren't worth watching either, and usually can be identified by "screamer" thumbnails and vapid clickbaity titles. I don't think we need to amplify another divisive topic.
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Frannky
I go on YouTube to watch humans talking, nature and music videos and get an insane amount of AI reviews, AI videos, and AI songs. What I find weird is how they end up at the top. Are people actually watching them, which is why they’re ranked so high? Or is the YouTube algorithm just being exploited? Fortunately, there are keywords that still bring back humans, but it’s so annoying.
Foobar8568
Take a look at the most viewed videos... It's gross.

Basically 90% are just crap done by computers (pre AI), targeting preschoolers.

qsera
most of them include potty training dinosaurs or monsters which shows authentic positions of such beings taking a shit, and the spectators ends up covered in or being bombarded with literal shit balls...

And know what is worse is that kids appear to prefer this to Tom and Jerry!

zf00002
Something I've noticed in a couple hobbies on youtube, is that the popular channels are not the ones that show up when I search. Like for cars, there ar 2 particular youtubers who show up all over search results, but amongst the car community you will never hear people talk about watching their videos.
crefiz
Me and my inner circle do watch them (even my sister-in-law, unemployed, just started to tinker with)

Can't speak for them though but when I search smt I don't really care if it is the top youtuber in my country or a random model with fake pictures, I just want to watch it

kenanfyi
It's funny the website is generated with AI. I'm kind of sure that the code as well.
haul_up
Been waiting for something like this; YouTube's AI detection is wildly inaccurate and just clutters the feed. Installing immediately.
Tajnymag
The extension relies on YouTube's AI detection, so it won't be any more accurate.
vist_orn
Finally, a way to reclaim my YouTube feed from the AI sludge. Been scrolling past too much uncanny valley lately.
flanked-evergl
YouTube needs a way to report mislabelled AI videos, and actually the "Made with AI" label is a bit misleading. I don't mind if it uses some AI, what I don't want is AI slop, and that can only really be reported by users.

Same with Instagram, they need a way to report AI.

chukar
Honestly, I've noticed a strange uptick in those videos. This sounds like a perfect solution to clean up the experience.
ssernikk
I love this concept, but use Firefox, so I ported it:

https://github.com/kacperwyczawski/herbisight (herbisight -> herbicide -> weeds, you know)

I've just submitted it to AMO for review (in the meantime, you can load extension/ via about:debugging). Will update the repo with the store link once approved!

vrganj
Thank you for your work, much appreciated!