Welcome to Edition 107! But before we dive into it, a quick heads up about what's happening in 50 days’ time…
SEG3 London (June 18-19). Super Early Bird passes end this Thursday at midnight. Join the likes of Warner Bros., London Marathon, Hasbro, Supercell and many more who, over the last few days, have locked in their spot for this summer.
Right, onto what you came for…
This week we’re delving into YouTube’s pushback against AI-made content, how their deepfake detection tool can actually give you a window into what fans are loving, and ways to build on that knowledge.
Plus Speed Reads of:
Inside the NFL’s social strategy for its 2026 draft
Toei Games Publishing Division launches with three new games
Your fans are already making content about you. Now what?
YouTube just opened its deepfake detection tool to anyone in entertainment who's at risk of having their likeness misused. Actors, athletes, musicians; you don't even need a YouTube channel.
I think we can all agree that having a meaningful mechanism to protect against the most harmful uses, like content that damages reputation, replaces work, or puts words in a person’s or character’s mouth they'd never say, is a plus.
It’s a conversation that was sparked by the infamous Brad Pitt v. Tom Cruise video, which showed just how quickly the technology is evolving, and how life-like the outputs are becoming.
How it works and who it’s for
YouTube has spent three years building this tool. For those of you familiar with the platform, its architecture mirrors Content ID (the platform's long-standing system for identifying copyrighted footage), but instead of a clip or a song being protected, it's now a face.
It works by uploading your likeness into the tool, and YouTube's system then continuously scans the platform and flags potential matches for that person's team to review.
It ran as a pilot program with Creative Artists Agency’s (CAA) roster in late 2024, then extended to politicians and public officials, and is now available to anyone who needs it.
So, what happens after something gets flagged?
Well, requesting removal doesn't guarantee it. YouTube's community guidelines still protect parody and satire. So, a comedy deepfake can stay.
What gets pulled is content that crosses into what the platform calls ‘realistic and consequential disparagement’ or ‘content replacement’ i.e. if someone uses your likeness to make something so close to your actual work that it directly substitutes for it.
One thing notably absent for now is monetisation.
With content ID, rights holders can share in the revenue of infringing uploads rather than just remove them. This tool doesn't do that yet, though YouTube's Chief Business Officer Mary Ellen Coe confirmed it's in their longer-term thinking.
Playing devil’s advocate
It would be easy, and overly simplistic, to brand anything AI-generated as bad, because what it tells us about fan attention is, actually, useful.
At the CNBC conference, Warner Bros co-CEO Pam Abdy was asked about AI-generated fan trailers for Practical Magic 2, and her response wasn't outrage.
"I know it’s not great, but it’s also exciting," Abdy said, "because that means that there's a desire for it, and that means that people want to come and play with the movie."
That's the line I keep coming back to. People want to come and play.
During the pilot program with CAA, large creators found that most content that flagged was benign, or better yet, even positive: Fan edits, tributes, appreciation and engagement made by AI tools and living on social media. Many requested the removal of only a small fraction of what surfaced.
That tells us something important. The deepfake crisis everyone is bracing for is real, but it exists alongside a much more prevalent phenomenon: fans using new creative tools to celebrate and be part of IP they love. The question for brands isn't just: "How do we protect ourselves?" It’s also: "What do we actually do about all the people who are already here, making things, and mean us no harm?”
In a previous edition, we spoke about four ways to separate infringement from participation, by:
Setting clear creative guardrails for emerging platforms and tools, so people know what’s acceptable and what is not.
Defining licensing pathways so good-faith creators don’t have to operate in grey areas.
Exploring micro-licensing or retroactive monetisation models where these infringements can be turned into revenue.
Using technology to track and categorise usage properly - so you can find infringements, big or small, and respond proportionately rather than with blanket reactions.
Finding a way to lean into fans who are creating content around their favourite brands and IP is where a lot of opportunity exists right now.
Brands that did it right
The data we've seen from the creator economy backs this up - fan-created content and micro-influencers are revenue drivers. In the first half of 2025, YouTube sponsorships were up 54% year-on-year. Brands bet on creators as their primary reach vehicle. Discovery through social sharing drives 30-40% higher retention than traditional acquisition channels. Fans who find something through a friend already feel like they belong before they've even engaged with the original IP.
If your IP has the kind of fandom that makes people want to make content about it, that's an opportunity.
Banijay understood this when they launched their Creators Lab with YouTube, offering up to €50,000 for creators to reimagine classic TV formats for digital audiences (which we covered in Edition 66). Rather than watching their IP get remixed without credit, they built the tools for it to happen officially. The creators got legitimacy. Banijay got reach, relevance, and a new generation of storytellers invested in their library.
As we wrote about in Edition 95, Puma did something similar with Marseille, building an AI tool that lets fans design the club's next kit and vote on the result. One fan, eventually, will be able to say: "I designed that." The brand gets an activating force multiplier, and the fan gets the ultimate story.
Both of these examples hit the steps we’ve outlined for engaging fans. They gave creators guidelines and tools, set up clear licensing rules, and delineated between what’s acceptable output and what isn’t.
Brands utilising this kind of innovation show an understanding that fandom is participatory. As we covered in Edition 80: 42% of fans are creating content surrounding their fandoms (and that number rises to 50% for Gen Z). In Edition 82, we went into how Lionsgate are tapping into that to promote their films.
Clearly, the path is there for studios and IP holders to engage their proactive fandom and reap the rewards of it. YouTube has given you a new tool to figure out how to engage these communities within your audience through micro-influencer fans.
Closing thoughts
With YouTube’s new tool, power is back in the hands of the IP and rights holders to decide if the content that’s being flagged does more harm than good. If you want a blanket take-down, go for it. But if you want to see what your fans are loving, engaging with, and sharing across YouTube and then build on it, you can.
Control is important, and protecting someone’s likeness is necessary. I also think that using this new tool to remove everything that infringes would be a guaranteed way to alienate your most engaged audience.
Instead, using YouTube’s deepfake detection tool as a way to gather data about who's creating, what they're making, and what's resonating, gives you something far more valuable: authentic insight. And it’s that insight that can help drive your strategy moving forward.
Speed Reads 📖
Inside the NFL's real-time content command centre for the 2026 Draft
TL:DR -
Draft week on the NFL's own channels drives over 500 million views, doubled in five years. This is proof that investing in real-time content infrastructure at scale pays off
44% of the TikTok audience reached during the Draft was 18-24, and 30% was female - significantly younger and more female than the NFL's regular season audience, showing what non-game tentpole moments can do for audience development
The NFL is using the Draft as a year-round content pipeline - player relationships built at the Combine and Draft feed directly into campaign planning for the season ahead
Why you should care
The Draft is proving itself to be a content event - and a goldmine at that. It’s built on anticipation, reaction, and an awful lot of opinions, and the NFL generates 500 million views from it.
This shows what happens when you start treating non-game moments as integral and build proper content infrastructure around them. For the NFL, it was a thousand posts a day. Thirty-three pieces of content per hour.
During last year's Draft on TikTok, 44% of the audience reached was 18-24, and 30% was female. Both are significantly higher than the NFL's regular-season numbers.
If your core audience skews older and more male, a properly crafted tentpole moment can reach people your usual content never touches. The Draft is a fan moment for people who already care and an acquisition tool for people who don't yet.
What I find most interesting about the NFL's approach is what happens after the cameras go off. Relationships built with players feed into Draft content. Draft content feeds into season-long campaign planning. By the time September arrives, the social team already knows which rookies have the biggest fan interest, what they're like as people, and how they might fit into future activations.
Toei Games Publishing Division launches with three new games
TL:DR -
Toei is building gaming credibility from scratch rather than coasting on borrowed fandom, which is harder but more durable
Starting on Steam before console is lower risk, faster to iterate, and lets you find your audience before committing to bigger platform deals
All three debut titles are from independent developers, suggesting Toei Games is positioning itself as a publisher and creative partner rather than an in-house studio
Why you should care
Toei has arguably some of the most valuable entertainment IP on the planet. The fact that it's choosing not to lead with it tells you something about their goal here: to build a games business with its own identity.
The three debut titles reflect that, with KILLA, a 3D mystery adventure built around memory and revenge, HINO, a hand-illustrated dark fantasy with a ballpoint-pen art style, and DEBUG NEPHEMEE, a top-down adventure built around hacking into characters' values and memories.
The temptation for any entertainment studio moving into games would be to lead with existing IP. It's lower risk commercially, easier to market, and has a built-in audience. But partnering with indie developers is a faster route to market and a lower-cost way to test what resonates.
Plus, it positions creativity as a key pillar of their label, and means new communities, new revenue streams, and creative territory you actually own. Opting for the latter may be riskier, but in the long run gives you a richer catalogue.
In other news
Anthropic’s new AI model sets off global alarms: read more
Canva’s Peppa Pig collaboration: read more
Venatus Partners with Roblox as Official Reseller for Rewarded Video Across the UK, France and Germany: read more
DICK'S Sporting Goods’ enhanced athlete experience play with Adobe: read more
Meta to cut 10% of workforce in AI push: read more
Lewis Hamilton to open international chain of trading card shops: read more
WBC rights set to be bundled with MLB, league probed for streaming costs: read more
Japan to protect celebrity voices against AI use: read more
Crunchyroll's global celebration of anime across retail, gaming, events and more: read more
Porsche x Pixar: the most special toys only get better with age: read more
Amazon and Anthropic expand strategic collaboration: read more
Quickture raises $4.5 million to help editors turn hours of footage into rough cuts faster: read more
Studio71 sold to Fixated, giving the company the network of 1,000-plus digital creators: read more
The Sims 4 marketplace launches on PlayStation, Xbox, making UGC available for the first time on consoles: read more
Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser unveils cast of his sprawling ‘Absurdaverse’ video game-tv series franchise: read more
Anime is no longer “watch-only.” It’s becoming a full-stack experience: read more
Sanrio launches gaming brand, tapping fast-growing global market: read more
Working on anything cool, or have a press release you would like us to cover? Send it in for the chance for it to be covered in next week’s edition!
That’s all for now, everyone - thanks again for reading the latest edition of The SEG3 Report. If you found it of interest, please do consider sharing with a colleague or friend who’d enjoy it too!