This new YouTube tool adds AI backgrounds to your videos instantly – for free

Have you ever had the perfect video idea but couldn’t shoot it because your background was messy, not what you wanted, or couldn’t be added to the video? YouTube just introduced a new AI-powered tool to help solve your background woes.   

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On Thursday, YouTube launched Dream Screen, an experimental AI-generated feature that allows users to add images or videos to the background of their YouTube Shorts using text-to-image prompts. As seen in the video below, users have the option to choose a style in addition to entering a prompt. 

YouTube does share that it has safeguards incorporated to prevent the creation of inappropriate, harmful, or sensitive topics, such as photorealistic images of identifiable people. Prompts that violate YouTube’s Community Guidelines will be blocked. The company also warns that, like any other AI model, Dream Screen may be prone to hallucinations. 

The feature is available to users in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. To access it, open the YouTube app, click Create, tap Dream Screen, and select the pink sparkle icon pictured in the video above. 

Then, you can enter a prompt you’d like to see generated in English and click Create, which will present you with multiple image options. Once you pick the image you want generated, you can use it or make it a video and use it as the background. 

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Even though the videos will have an AI image-generated component, YouTube doesn’t specify if there will be labeling to make that distinction. The promotional materials don’t showcase any specific labels, which could lead to confusion about what’s generated and what’s not.