YouTube Shuts Down 2 Major Channels Over AI-Created Fake Trailers

Posted in: Movies, streaming, TV, YouTube | Tagged: ai, disney, youtube

YouTube Shuts Down 2 Major Channels Over AI-Created Fake Trailers

YouTube has reportedly shut down Screen Culture and KH Studio channels for continuing to host fake AI-generated film & television trailers.

Published Thu, 18 Dec 2025 13:15:04 -0600
by Ray Flook
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Earlier this month, The Walt Disney Company CEO Bob ("AIger") Iger announced a three-year, $1 billion deal with OpenAI that will see a whole lot of "The Mouse's" IPs making their way over to OpenAI's Sora. Shortly after, Disney's legal folks sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google demanding that Google take immediate action to safeguard Disney's licensing rights to its IPs (more on that below). Google responded by removing dozens of AI-generated videos that featured Disney-owned characters – including Mickey Mouse, Deadpool, and others.

Now, Deadline Hollywood is reporting exclusively that YouTube has shut down two channels with high subscriber numbers for using AI to create fake trailers. With more than 2 million subscribers combined, the Screen Culture and KH Studio channels now display the message, "This page isn't available. Sorry about that. Try searching for something else." Earlier this year, both channels were hit with ad suspensions after it was shown that they were hosting AI-created fake trailers. Though both channels made initial changes to have their ability to monetize their content returned, YouTube notes that both Screen Culture and KH Studio returned to violating its spam and misleading metadata policies.

Disney's Cease-and-Desist Letter & Google/YouTube: An Overview

"The Mouse's" legal team made it clear in their letter to Google that it sees Google's training setups and services as an infringement on Disney's IP rights. "Google is intentionally amplifying the scope of its infringement, by making its infringing AI Services available across so many channels to so many consumers, flooding the market with infringing works, and reaping enormous profits and other value from its unlawful, harmful, and damaging exploitation of Disney's copyrighted works."

Also in the letter, "The Mouse" noted that there were efforts made to work with Google, but nothing had resulted from it, and that the use of its copyrighted works "has only increased" over that time period. "Google operates as a virtual vending machine, capable of reproducing, rendering, and distributing copies of Disney's valuable library of copyrighted characters and other works on a mass scale. And compounding Google's blatant infringement, many of the infringing images generated by Google's AI Services are branded with Google's Gemini logo, falsely implying that Google's exploitation of Disney's intellectual property is authorized and endorsed by Disney." To that last point, "The Mouse" contended that Google Gemini treats "Disney's valuable copyrighted characters like its own, and making them available to subscribers for a fee."

For its part, "The Mouse" sought to have Google cease any further violations of its copyright licenses and implement a system that blocks its IPs from being used in the future. In addition, Disney is seeking Google's disclosure of which copyrighted works were utilized during the training of AI models and to cease using them immediately. Google's "willful infringement is especially alarming because it is leveraging its dominance in generative AI and across multiple other markets to make its infringing AI Services as widely available as possible," added the letter from Disney.

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