Lens Comes to YouTube Shorts—Should Creators Worry?

Lens Comes to YouTube Shorts—Should Creators Worry?

Byte-Sized Brief

  • Lens in Shorts beta starts this week.
  • Can ID objects, text, and landmarks.
  • Public figures may be identified.

Google announced on Thursday that it’s rolling out a new beta that brings Google Lens to YouTube Shorts on iOS and Android. Starting this week, viewers can pause a Short, tap “Lens,” and select objects and landmarks to get more information about them. For example, if a Short shows a famous building, you can identify it and learn about its history without leaving the app. This will also let you translate text directly from the video.

But should creators be concerned about privacy? AI tools can already find people’s locations and identify objects from images, so this adds yet another space where privacy could be a concern. Google doesn’t say whether creators can opt out, except on Shorts with YouTube Shopping affiliate tags. The company also says it doesn’t use biometric facial recognition with Lens, but may still show search results for notable public figures. For now, it sounds like the privacy risks are limited, but creators should still be aware that public landmarks can be identified much more easily than before.

The Bottom Line

YouTube’s new Lens feature lets people search what they see in Shorts. Creators should be careful about what’s visible in their content since it’s about to get a lot easier for viewers to dig into those details.

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