Creator Weekly: YouTube Simplifies Search, Monetize Controversial Content, Apple Creator Studio

Tech companies are back up to speed after the winter holidays with new product updates and features. There’s news from YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Bluesky, Instagram, Search and AI updates from Gemini, ChatGPT, and Grok.

Top news and updates this week

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Are you caught up with the latest Creator Trends? Watch my recap of 2025 and predictions for 2026.

The YouTube team on the Creator Insider channel want to know what you want to hear about. Post your suggestions in their comments. Yes, you can add PeggyKTC.com as a preferred source.

YouTube updated their search filters: “We are simplifying and reorganizing the filter menu to make it more intuitive and improve the overall search experience. This includes removing some options that were not working as expected and had contributed to user complaints.” Learn more about advanced search filters.

YouTube updated its advertiser-friendly guidelines to allow monetization of some controversial topics including abortion, self-harm, suicide, domestic and sexual abuse, as long as the content is descriptive, non-graphic and/or dramatized. Previously those topics could not be monetized at all.

Content about child abuse or eating disorders are still ineligible for ad revenue.Learn more.

The new Google Veo 3.1 “Ingredients to Video” lets you generate videos from up to 3 reference images and a prompt. This helps you create clips with consistent characters and/or settings.

Availability:  

Generated clips have an embedded SynthID watermark. Video watermarks can be detected by the Gemini app, if you want to check whether something was created by Google’s AI tools (it doesn’t detect Adobe’s Content Credentials watermark).

The Spotify Partner Program for video podcasters is expanding eligibility. It now requires:

They are also simplifying sponsorships with ad slots that can be removed, replaced or scheduled ahead of time. And podcasters can directly publish and monetize videos from a variety of hosting platforms (like Acast or Podigee).

The new Apple Creator Studio subscription gives you access to Apple’s creative apps for Mac and iPad. It includes: 

Apps can still be purchased individually. At $12.99 per month, the subscription is significantly less expensive than Adobe Creative Cloud.

If you live stream and are on Bluesky, the latest version includes the Live Now beta. This lets you add a temporary “Live” badge on your avatar when you go live on Twitch. Viewers can click it to land directly on your stream page. 

The beta is currently limited to Twitch and Streamplace links, but Bluesky says they may support other streaming platforms in the future.

Google launched Gemini Personal Intelligence. The killer feature is that it connects Gemini to your personal data in Google services, including Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube and Search. 

Google says your personal data, like photos, is not used for training (although prompts and responses may be). 

Note that you may discover it’s not properly seeing your YouTube History. That is because it does not access your YouTube data that is on a brand account. So if you are like me, and you do all your watching signed into a brand account channel, the new Gemini Personal Intelligence won’t be able to access that data.

This is available to US Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions. It’s off by default, so you need to enable access to your data.

If you are using YouTube’s “Promotion” feature to advertise your channel or a video, you can now target viewers with specific interests, such as Gaming or Beauty, in addition to viewer demographics and locations. Learn more.

The first Edits updates of the new year. The video editing app added the ability to add Instagram links, new video effects, add multiple video and audio takes to your storyboard, plus weekly ideas based on Reels you’ve already shared.

Meta shared details on how their engineering team uses surveys in the Facebook Reels feed to identify user “True Interests” and improve recommendations. Why surveys?
“[Signals such as likes, shares and watch time] can be noisy and may not fully capture the nuances of what people actually care about or want to see. Models trained only on these signals tend to recommend content that has high short-term user value measured by watch time and engagement but doesn’t capture true interests that are important for long-term utility of the product.”

Disney+ announced they will add a feed of vertical videos, meant to increase viewer engagement. 

Restream now lets you set up simultaneous vertical and landscape livestreams to YouTube. This requires using the Restream plugin with OBS.

StreamYard has doubled the character limit for their Notes feature, letting you and your co-hosts see more information during your broadcast.

A new pivot to video? The Press-Gazette reports that referral traffic from Google Search and Google Discover was down by a third in 2025, and they expect the trend to continue in 2026. Facebook referrals are slightly up over the past year. Meanwhile publishers are focusing their efforts on YouTube, AI Platforms and TikTok.

Beehiiv launched several updates, including Dynamic Content available to all users on the Max Plan, add automations triggered by a product purchase, website improvements, and bulk actions on posts (tags, authors, hiding or archiving posts).

The rebooted Digg platform has launched to the public. You join communities based on your interests, and community members post, comment, and upvote content. They plan to verify that an account represents a real person using AI and other new tech.

Bluesky now supports stock ticker symbol tags (“cashtags”) as hashtags. 

Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted about the apparent unstoppable influx of AI-generated content, and says they will look to verify authentic content and original creators. This, while Meta is pushing its generative AI tools, seems disingenuous. Social Media Today’s Andrew Hutchinson notes, “[Mosseri] is a corporate drone, with little personality or passion about anything in particular, and no matter what, he’s going to tow the company line, and say whatever is best for Instagram and/or Meta, no matter what” and “has no understanding of what creative people really want or need.”

Related story in Wired: Pinterest Users Are Tired of All the AI Slop

Instagram had to announce that it had NOT suffered a data breach. People did receive unrequested password reset emails, but that was apparently due to requests from an “external party” that didn’t have account access. 

Instagram now lets most users see “your algorithm” for Reels, and add and remove topics to improve your feed. This is available in English in “most countries.”

X now has a Creator Studio hub, with creator tools (AI Inspiration, Analytics), monetization, and support. This is available in the mobile app and desktop.

X now lets all Premium subscribers post long-form Articles. Previously you had to be a Premium+ subscriber. Is it worth paying $8 per month? Probably not, unless your audience is mostly on X and you can earn revenue from Subscriptions or Creator Revenue Sharing.

X is under fire for allowing GrokAI to create nude or “bikini” deepfakes of real people, including teens and children. After Elon Musk downplayed the seriousness of the issue, and framed criticisms as censorship, X is actually making changes as multiple countries investigate and consider banning the platform. Andrew Hutchinson at Social Media Today has the latest.

OpenAI is bringing ads to ChatGPT, supposedly in alignment with their mission to “ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.” OpenAI says the ads will not influence ChatGPT answers, and will be clearly labeled. Of course they suggest this is a good thing, and will help “small businesses and emerging brands trying to compete” (which I read as businesses that no longer get clicks from search).  They will begin testing ads in the US for free and Go tier users. 

Apple will now use Google Gemini models to power Apple Intelligence as “the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models.”

Google Trends Explore has a new Gemini AI side panel that identifies and compares related trends to your area of interest. You can edit the search terms, and filter by country, time and property (Web Search, YouTube Search, Image Search, News Search, Google Shopping). 

Google Translate is getting a boost from Gemini. In addition to improved more natural translations and live speech-to-speech translation (in beta). 

Gmail is getting new Gemini AI features for everyone: AI Overviews for conversation summaries (for everyone) and for inbox questions (AI Pro and Ultra subscribers); “Help Me Write”; Suggested Replies (updated Smart Replies); and for trusted testers, a separate AI Inbox with an email briefing. These features are rolling out in English in the US.

The Wikimedia Foundation announced new partnerships, providing Wikipedia access to more AI platforms. New partners include Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, MistralAI and Perplexity. Google was already a partner. This allows the companies to “...integrate human-governed knowledge into their platforms at scale. By doing so, they help ensure that the work of our global volunteer community reaches billions of people with the accuracy and transparency that Wikipedia represents.”

Businesses are learning the hard way that just because you can create an AI tool, doesn’t mean you should. Evoto makes photo editing tools for professional photographers. It’s not a surprise that those customers were mad when Evoto released an AI Headshot Generator, positioning it as a tool for creating professional headshots without having to hire a photographer. The company has since apologized and removed the tool (which they claim was inadvertently released early). It’s not clear they will recover customer trust.

What are the trending colors of 2026? It depends on who you ask. Pinterest says it’s Cool Blue, Jade, Plum Noir, Wasabi and Persimmon. Pantone’s color of the year is Cloud Dancer (i.e., white). And WGSN predicted Transformative Teal. Their predictions for 2027 are Luminous Blue, Energy Orange, Pop Pink, Meadowland Green, and Clay, which are similar to Pinterest’s suggestions.

This makes me want to find my dad’s old slide rules: You Need A Kitchen Slide Rule 

HowTown: What the actual science says about "brain rot" 

Microdramas, which first became popular in China, are now a global phenomenon. These are soap operas filmed in vertical format with very short episodes. TikTok has a new microdrama hub called PineDrama, which is available in the US and Brazil. Expect to see more of these!

Meta has laid off more than 1,000 employees from its Reality Labs VR division (that’s about 10% of its staff). Not surprisingly, Meta Horizon Workrooms -- the Metaverse for work -- is being discontinued. Mashable notes that most people probably don’t want to wear an Oculus Quest VR headset to sit at a virtual table to attend a virtual meeting. Meta says they are focusing on other metaverse products like AR glasses.

Thanks for reading! 🌼