Jul 24, 2026
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Add us on GoogleIf you make money on YouTube, or plan to, the platform just made the rules considerably more explicit about what it won’t pay for.
On July 16, YouTube passed changes to its existing policies on “inauthentic content,” defining three specific video categories that will no longer be allowed to earn money through the YouTube Partner Program. The update was announced by YouTube trust and safety vice president Matt Halprin in a video confirmed by TechCrunch.
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It’s not a new rule. In 2025, YouTube announced it was curtailing revenue from mass-produced, repetitive content that AI tools help churn out at scale. The July 16 update adds specificity to those existing guidelines.
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The three categories
The first type of content is repetitive, generic or template-based — channels stuffed with near-identical videos produced through AI, CGI or templates. Halprin noted that even tutorial videos can be included here if they’re unoriginal content already prevalent on the platform.
The second is “off-putting” content: videos designed to manipulate viewers to click through emotion. Halprin’s example was an animal seemingly in distress before someone conveniently rescues it.
“We’ve heard from our viewers that that’s not something that they like,” he said. “They find it off-putting. They don’t want to come back to that channel, or maybe even the platform.”
Channels built around this content lose Partner Program access, whether or not AI made the videos.
The third category targets AI personas used to discuss sensitive subjects. According to TechCrunch, YouTube specifically flagged finance, legal issues, healthcare and medical content as areas where AI-generated representations of real people are now barred from monetization.
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Why YouTube is doing this and why it matters financially
The Partner Program is YouTube’s primary mechanism for paying creators, and protecting it is central to the platform’s business. YouTube’s ad revenue, around $40.4 billion last year, exceeded that of Disney, NBC, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery combined.
Allowing the platform to show low-quality AI content risks the viewership’s trust and loyalty, which maintains those advertising dollars. But Halprin didn’t name AI itself as the problem.
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“AI can actually allow people to make a lot of videos,” he said. “Sometimes those videos are great, and it really enhances creativity.”
The issue, he explained, is that the same tools enabling high-quality creative output also let operators churn out large volumes of similar clips with no originality — the very content farming the platform wants removed from its monetization.
What this means for creators
For the more than three million creators who participate in YouTube’s Partner Program, the policy clarification has immediate implications.
The program tier offering ad revenue requires 1,000 subscribers and either 4,000 valid public watch hours in the past 12 months or 10 million Shorts views in the past 90 days. Meeting those thresholds no longer protects a channel if its content falls into one of the three new categories.
A large unresolved question, though, is enforcement. While Halprin noted channels with repetitive, manipulative or low-effort content won’t be monetized anymore, he didn’t outline the threshold.
Until that happens, creators using AI tools legitimately to scale original content will need sound judgment in finding the line between permitted volume and penalized content farming.
As YouTube clamps down on how revenue is made, creator success might ride on the waves of originality and narrative.
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With a writing and editing career spanning over 15 years, Emma creates and refines content across a broad spectrum of industries, including personal finance, lifestyle, travel, health & wellness, real estate, beauty & fitness and B2B/SaaS/tech.
