For a lot of people, YouTube is where they get to see the first trailer of something, sometimes, they were waiting a long time for a new trailer, other times they just stumble across it. But, there is a seedy side of the platform with people purposefully uploading fake movie trailers in order to gain traction and fall back on it being a "concept" or "fan trailer." It's only gotten worse with the advancements in the AI space. People can just prompt a video generator to cobble something together and sometimes, they can look half-decent.
Earlier in the year, YouTube demonetized two of the most notorious of fake trailer makers, Screen Culture and KH Studios, following an investigation from Deadline that analyzed how they produce their trailers without, at the time, indicating that it was a "fan trailer." The videos very much copied the marketing strategy of several high-profile movies. Screen Culture, for example, put out 23 versions of fake Fantastic Four: First Steps trailers, some even outranking the official trailer.
YouTube reinstated said monetization after they began adding that they aren't official to titles with "fan trailer." They stopped doing that, though, in recent times, and now Deadline breaks that YouTube has had enough.
The channels have been officially terminated, as them going back on citing their AI generated videos as fan trailers breaks their policy on spam and misleading content. That said, just creating fan trailers using AI generation should probably fall under that overall, but that's neither here nor there, as there are some good fan trailer makers that make it clear that they aren't part of the marketing team of whatever high-profile movie they're making a trailer of.
In response to Deadline at the time, KH Studio's founder asserted that they weren't running it to mislead viewers, but rather entertain them.
“I’ve been running KH Studio full-time for over three years now, putting everything into it. It’s tough to see it grouped under “misleading content” in the demonetization decision, when my goal has always been to explore creative possibilities – not to misrepresent real releases,”
Meanwhile, Nikhil P. Chaudhari, the founder of Screen Culture asserts that there isn't any harm in their unofficial videos, as most people are aware Screen Culture isn't sharing exclusive trailers they got from official sources. The problem is that they splice together official footage alongside fake footage made to solely game the YouTube algorithm.