It's Wednesday, and KPop Demon Hunters is officially the most-viewed Netflix movie of all time. Talk about going for the gold.

Today’s News

GAME ON

YouTube is making the NFL’s opening night a creator collab

The opening night: YouTube has played a significant role in the rise of alternative streams that run adjacent to traditional sports broadcasts. Now, it’s bringing that format to its first-ever exclusive airing of a regular-season NFL game—which also happens to be the first matchup of the 2025 season.

A traditional broadcast of the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers face-off will be streamed on the YouTube homepage and the official NFL channel, and will feature commentary from Super Bowl-winning QB Kurt Warner and longtime broadcaster Rich Eisen. Former college football player Deestroying will also report from the sidelines, and Colombian pop star Karol G—who has a sizable YouTube presence of her own—will perform a halftime set.

In addition to that traditional feed, several alternative streams will be hosted by stars like iShowSpeed. (This isn’t Speed’s first rodeo. Along with his buddy Kai Cenat, the streamer hit the NFL YouTube channel ahead of last season’s Super Bowl to provide pregame entertainment.) Now, Speed is one of four creators who will co-stream the Chiefs-Chargers tilt. Comedian Tom Grossi will helm the other English-language alternative broadcast, while Spanish-language coverage will be provided by Robegrill and SKabeche.

The motivations: Given the fanfare and expense associated with YouTube’s NFL regular season exclusives, the platform’s decision to deflect some traffic away from its traditional feed is a bit of a surprise. But YouTube has several reasons to turn creators into simulcasters.

Reach is one obvious consideration—especially given Speed’s 43 million YouTube subscribers—but the alternate streams will also give YouTube an opportunity to test its relatively new Watch With feature, which will power the high-profile creator broadcasts. If successful, you can expect the distribution strategy to be standard operating procedure for marquee streams in the future. After all, it’s been working well on Twitch for years.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Apex Legends is playing host to the Creator Tournament Series, which will pit streamers against one another across the “wildest, most unforgettable events.” (Tubefilter)
  
  

• In the wake of Netflix’s recent box office success, Amazon Prime Video is bringing Hazbin Hotel to theaters in 25 states across the U.S. (Gizmodo)
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• Meta is reportedly backing a new California super PAC designed to support AI-friendly political candidates. (Engadget)
  
  

• OpenAI is facing “the first known wrongful death lawsuit against an AI company” over allegations that ChatGPT helped a teenager plan his eventual suicide. (Engadget)

THE BIZ

Netflix will let production partners use some AI—but it has rules

The update: Last month, CEO Ted Sarandos revealed that Netflix had used a text-to-video generator to cut down on VFX costs for a scene in a miniseries called The Eternaut. That was the first time generated video had appeared as part of a finished Netflix product.

Now, Netflix is allowing production partners to use generators, too—as long as they inform the platform about it. The catch: partners are not allowed to keep generated assets in their final works or use generators to make footage of real events and/or people.

The rules: So, what kind of AI activity does Netflix allow? In a blog post, the streamer laid out five principles for using generators in production of content for its platform:

1. The outputs do not replicate or substantially recreate identifiable characteristics of unowned or copyrighted material, or infringe any copyright-protected works.
   
   

2. The generative tools used do not store, reuse or train on production data inputs or outputs.
   
   

3. Where possible, generative tools are used in an enterprise-secured environment to safeguard inputs.
   
   

4. Generated material is temporary and not part of the final deliverables.
   
   

5. GenAI is not used to replace or generate new talent performances or union-covered work without consent.

Netflix also laid out cases where partners would need written permission. Those include using Netflix’s own proprietary data, using other artists’ work to train generators, using prompts that reference copyrighted works, using generators to create key characters/settings/visuals, and using generators to recreate the likenesses/voices/etc. of real human talent.

The context: Netflix’s guidelines are some of the first to be released publicly, since Hollywood studios are mostly closed-mouth about using generators. The biggest discussion around generated content guidelines so far has come from SAG-AFTRA, which has backed down from a total ban on the use of AI—as long as the union gets a cut.

GETTING HYPED

YouTube’s Hype machine just hit the U.S.

The tool: YouTube is helping shine a light on unsung creators. The platform has announced the global expansion of Hype, a tool that highlights channels with fewer than 500,000 subscribers.

YouTube first announced Hype last year as a test feature in Brazil, Turkey, and Taiwan. Now, Hype is spreading to 39 countries, including major markets like the U.S. and India.

On YouTube’s mobile app, the Hype button will appear on eligible channels next to other creator-friendly features like Remix and Thanks. Viewers can give Hype to three videos per week, and the uploads that receive the most kudos will show up on a central leaderboard that can be found via the mobile Explore tab.

The points system is weighted so that smaller channels benefit more from receiving Hype, but Hyped videos from any hub under the 500,000-subscriber threshold will carry a badge that will appear across the platform.

The context: Hype probably won’t be a game-changer for most small creators, since there will be stiff competition for the 100 spots on the leaderboard. What the feature does do, however, is express the growing importance of “microinfluencers” who are able to haul in marketing dollars even without substantial subscriber counts.  

The expansion of Hype also reiterates an ideal that YouTube has long emphasized to encourage new creators: size doesn’t matter. Regardless of subscriber counts, an impressive video can still break through the noise. Now it just has another way to do so.

WATCH THIS

YouTube is amping up two creator tools

“This Week at YouTube”: Hype isn’t the only feature shaking up YouTube this week. In a recent Creator Insider video, YouTube program manager Lauren outlined two additional changes coming to the platform: the expansion of English-language AI-generated video summaries and “the launch of templates on the YT Create app.”

Tune in here to learn more.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.