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Creator Weekly: YouTube Shorts & Google Photos AI Tools, Follow Reddit Keywords

Creator Weekly: YouTube Shorts & Google Photos AI Tools, Follow Reddit Keywords

Peggy K
July 26, 2025

Another week, another passel of generative AI tools.

This week there is an experiment with vibe coding, and new creative tools for YouTube Shorts and Google Photos. There are new reports for YouTubers in Analytics and website owners in Search Console. Maps is removing social following. And there are new requirements for UK adults to verify their age to see “adult” content. Plus lots more.

🔴 Join me live on Sunday to chat about this week’s updates
✅ Do you know what Google product launched in 1999? Take this week’s quiz.

Top news and updates this week

Top news and updates this week
- The YouTube Shorts editor has a new AI Playground hub for generative AI tools, new AI-powered special effects, and the ability to turn photos into short video clips (not available in all countries).
- Many platforms are now requiring adult age verification to comply with child safety laws in the UK, Ireland, Australia and more places around the world.
- Use vibe coding to create shareable mini-apps with Google Opal.
- YouTube Analytics now shows a breakdown of your audience by watch behavior (Regular, Casual and New viewers).
- Google Search Console now lets you compare the last 24 hours data to the previous day or the same day in the previous week.
- A new experimental Google Search Web Guide uses AI to organize the search results.
- There’s a new Google Trends API that developers can test, with useful features for comparing trends data over time.
- Google Photos is adding a Create tab to help you find creative tools. You will also soon be able to turn a photo into a video and remix a photo into a new style.
- Google Maps will soon remove followers. Public profiles will still exist, but with no way to follow them.
- Reddit lets you follow keywords.
- Meta (Instagram, Facebook, Threads) will stop allowing “political, election, or social issue” ads in the EU.
- Add music to your Facebook text posts.
- Threads shows more post stats and insights.
- LinkedIn will soon remove hashtag feeds. You can still use hashtags, but it’s only recommended for trends and specific topics.
- Plus itch.io’s removal of NSFW games, private equity buying YouTube channels, and more.
🗓 Ten Years Ago This Week: YouTube Mobile Redesign
To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing highlights from 2015.
Ten years ago, the YouTube mobile app got a major redesign. It helped connect viewers to videos with a Subscriptions tab and Home tab with recommended videos. They also launched the subscription notification bell, letting you be notified of every new upload.
They also added a basic video editor, where you could trim, filter and add music to your videos. What more would you need?

To Do & Try

Opal is a new experimental platform from Google that lets you create mini-AI apps, just using natural language and visual editing (no coding!) to set up a workflow. There’s a Gallery of apps you can use as building blocks, or just use as-is.

Opal is aimed at creators, marketers, “innovators, and doers”, and examples include creating a blog post or social media post, product research or business profiles, using YouTube videos to create quizzes or generate music playlists.You can share your app with anyone who has a Google account. It’s currently a US-only public beta. Give it a try.

More AI Tools for YouTube Shorts

YouTube is adding new generative AI tools in the Shorts editor.

AI Playground helps you find the latest generative AI creative tools, and has a gallery of inspirational examples with pre-filled prompts to help you “instantly generate videos, images, music, and more." To find this, open the Shorts editor in the YouTube mobile app, then click the sparkle icon at top right. This is available in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

There are also new YouTube Shorts AI tools powered by Veo 2, Google’s text-to-video model:

Transform photos into videos (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and available to more regions in the future)
New generative AI special effects. These will be expanding to creators globally.

These will be powered by Google’s latest text-to-video model Veo 3 starting later this summer.

Generated video and images are labeled as synthetic and have a SynthID watermark.

YouTube is also testing new features in Dream Track AI-generated music in Shorts. “If you’re a creator in the experiment group, you may see new options and quality enhancements to the customized soundtracks you can create for your Shorts.” This is available to select creators in the US. Learn more.

Age Verification for UK Users (and beyond)

On July 25, the Online Safety Act went into effect in the UK. This requires big social media platforms to use “highly effective” age checks and prevent children from being recommended “harmful material”. Violations can result in large fines and other penalties.

Countries including Ireland, Australia, various US states and other countries either have similar requirements or are working on implementing similar requirements.

According to the Guardian, Meta says that its teen account feature (which includes experimental AI technology to identify teen accounts) meets those requirements with restrictions on Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger. They use third party platform Yoti to perform privacy-preserving age verification.

X says they use multiple signals to verify a user’s age, including the age of the account, legacy verification, and previous ID verification. They apparently plan to use facial age estimation and mandatory ID verification, which will be available in the “coming weeks”. (It’s not clear how regulators will take that assurance).

YouTube has been requiring age verification for EU and UK users to access age-restricted content at least since 2020, when updates to the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive went into effect.

Bluesky now requires age verification for UK users to access mature content and use DMs. The platform uses Epic Games Kid Web Services (KWS) platform for verification, which lets you choose between using a face scan or using a credit card.

Flickr's new terms of service now limit accounts to adults. You must be 18+ to create a new account to "align with evolving global online safety standards". The previous minimum age was 16 with adult supervision. And for UK users you can only disable Safe Search with a paid Pro account (as the credit card serves as age verification)

Discord started “experimental” age verification in the UK and Australia in April. It’s not clear if they are still doing that.

As I noted in last week’s edition, Reddit requires UK users to go through age verification to access 18+ content using Persona.

Tumblr requires a birthdate to be entered to see some content, but doesn’t seem to do any actual verification. Fun fact: accounts created before 2011 don’t have an associated birthday. Mine doesn’t. So no adult content for me.

Ofcom, the UK online communications regulator, says they have just launched a monitoring and impact program, focusing on sites most popular with children, including Roblox, Snap, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook (Do UK children actually spend time on Facebook? US teens do not). We’ll likely hear about the effectiveness of age verification in a few months.

The bigger picture is that there is a legitimate concern that requiring age verification will result in privacy issues. Governments should not need to know who is looking at sexy pictures, only that the person is of legal age. Big companies use third party platforms like Persona and Yoti for age-verification, but if the requirements extend to smaller apps, businesses and platforms, expect them to check IDs.

Google and Apple have been working on platform age assurance tools for Android and iOS devices, respectively. These use Zero Knowledge Proof technology to verify your age while still protecting your privacy. The system can see you are age 18+, but not connect that with your identity.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube Analytics now shows an overview of your audience by watch behavior. You can also break down views on your popular content by type of viewer behavior.

Regular viewers: view your content at least once a month for > 6 months in the past year
Casual viewers: view your content at least once a month for 1-5 months in the past year
New viewers

If you have a YouTube Premium subscription, a current test feature you can try is threaded comments. YouTube says the goal is “more focused reading experience and helps users easily understand conversations.”

Tips for podcasts with video: Your thumbnail is the billboard, so don’t use generic headshots; it’s not just audio, so think visually; YouTube helps people find your back catalogue.

Vimeo announced updates for viewers and creators. A new Vimeo app is available on Apple TV, the video editor offers smoother transitions, you can record up to 2K resolution (with 4K coming soon) and more.

Newly uploaded videos to Google Drive now show a thumbnail preview as you drag the progress bar. This is only available for new uploads.

Web Publishers and Search

Google Search Console added comparison mode for recent data, including a hourly breakdown for last 24 hours vs. previous 24 hours, and a comparison of the last 24 hours vs same day the previous week. Google Search Console added “24 hours view” last December.

Web Guide is a new Google Search Labs experiment. It uses a custom version of Gemini to group links in the search results. Like Google’s Search AI Mode it uses a “query fan out” technique to run multiple related searches simultaneously. Google says that it may “better surface web pages you may not have previously discovered”. To try it, opt in to Web Guide in Google Search Labs. As always, the question is whether this will actually encourage people to visit the web pages in the search results.

There is a new Google Trends API. You can access Google Trends (trends.google.com) on the web to see what people around the world are searching for. The API will provide trends data from the past five years, and it will show consistently scaled data. The Trends website always scales the data between 0 and 100%, making it more difficult to compare trends, so the API will be an improvement, letting you compare dozens of terms and search interest between requests. If you are a developer, apply to be an alpha tester.

Casey Newton writes “When people do a search and see a [Google Search] AI Overview, they are 50% less likely to click on a link, and are likelier to just stop browsing.” (This is not surprising, but depressing.) Google does say "We've seen that when people click from search results pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are higher quality", but they never mention traffic volume. It really seems that the "higher quality" clicks don't make up for the huge drop in total clicks from search.

Simon Owens: How Medium finally pivoted its way to profitability. There are bits about Ev Williams early successes at Blogger and Twitter. And reveals that before Tony Stubblebine took over they were considering a pivot to Web 3.0 (probably cryptocurrency). Most importantly, it’s about who Medium is for. There’s a Partner Program, but it’s more for hobbyist writers than “content creators”.

Photos

There are new AI-powered creative tools in Google Photos (US only)

Turn a photo into video. You can choose "subtle movements" or "I'm feeling lucky". Rolling out now for iOS, and next week on Android. (If you want more creative options try this feature in the YouTube Shorts editor)
Remix a photo with a new style (this reminds me of Prisma, but with 3D options). Rolling out for iOS and Android over the next few weeks.
There will soon be a Create tab, where you can find all Google Photos creative tools, including collages, highlight videos, creative AI tools and more (rolling out in August)

Looking for photos? Follow these tips for getting the most out of photo search on Flickr.

If you contribute reviews or photos to Google Maps, you have the option to make your profile public. Up until now, people have been able to follow the public profiles of Local Guides they find interesting or informative. Starting in September, Maps profiles will no longer be followable. Profiles can still be public, but all follower and following data will be removed. You can still create shareable lists in Maps, and you may be able to find your favorite reviewers on Instagram, TikTok or other social sites. If you are a Local Guide, Local Guides Connect is your forum.

Reddit has added a new option to get keyword notifications. The option to enter keywords is at the top of the left menu. Reddit will notify you about new posts and comments with your keyword(s).

Beginning in October, Meta will no longer allow “political, electoral and social issue ads” in the EU. This is due to “unworkable requirements and legal uncertainties introduced by the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulations.” Google (including YouTube) are taking similar action.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri says that adding “link in bio” in a caption will not cause the reach of a post to decrease. But that may be a secondary effect, if people don’t engage with the post because they click away to get the link.

You can now add music to Facebook text posts. Facebook says “discover new music, see what your friends are listening to”.

You can get more stats in Threads Insights, including where people saw your posts and interactions with your posts.

Engadget reports: Meta has ended its bonus program on Threads. Meta quietly stopped paying out the bonus to Threads creators in April.

On LinkedIn Senior Director of Product Management Rishi Jobanputra answered a question whether posts should include hashtags. The answer is that they are “nice to have”, but not “need to have”. He says the LinkedIn algorithm has gotten good enough to match content to audience without them, and they are actually in the process of getting rid of their hashtag feed. They are mostly useful if you are posting on a specific trend or topic.

Jobanputra also shared more details about the LinkedIn algorithm: “The LinkedIn Feed prioritizes what’s most relevant to each member based on signals like their interests, how they engage on LinkedIn, and how timely or valuable your post may seem to them.” You may see older posts or posts from people you don’t follow if the algorithm thinks you would be interested.

Custom feeds built in Surf and published on Bluesky are now available through the Bluesky Directory.

TechCrunch: Open source X rival Mastodon begins raising funds with new in-app donation feature

More AI Updates and Tips

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shared a communication that was sent to Microsoft employees. Their business priorities: security, quality and AI transformation. AI in everything, everywhere. “Getting both the product and platform right for the AI wave is our North Star!” It acknowledges recent layoffs and "uncertainties", while suggesting people need to keep learning, improving and getting better every day. Also, AI.

If you use the DuckDuckGo browser, you can choose to hide AI-generated images from the search results.