YouTube Bans Indian Channels With Millions of Subscribers for Fake AI Trailers

Credits: Screen Culture / YouTube

YouTube has terminated two Indian channels known for producing AI-generated movie trailers that misled viewers into believing they were official previews.

The two banned channels, Screen Culture based in India and KH Studio in Georgia, amassed a combined total of more than two million subscribers and over a billion views before the bans took effect this week.

The terminations stemmed from violations of the site's policies on spam and misleading metadata, after the channels failed to consistently disclose the fabricated nature of their content.

Screen Culture, created by Nikhil P. Chaudhari, employed more than 10 editors to blend official footage with AI-created images, resulting in videos such as multiple iterations of trailers for Marvel's "The Fantastic Four: First Steps."

The channel released 23 versions of that trailer by March, with some appearing higher in search results than the studio's authentic one.

Similar content included trailers for HBO's "Harry Potter" series and Netflix's "Wednesday," often without labels indicating they were unofficial.

KH Studio followed a comparable approach, posting trailers for nonexistent projects like "GTA: San Andreas (2025) Teaser Trailer" and "Malcolm In The Middle Reboot (2025) First Trailer."

YouTube initially suspended advertising on both channels earlier this year following reports of policy breaches related to deceptive content.

Monetization resumed once the channels incorporated terms such as "fan trailer" or "parody" into video titles (without declaring that it's generated with artificial intelligence), but those disclaimers vanished in recent months, prompting the full shutdowns.

"After their initial suspension, these channels made the necessary corrections in order to be readmitted into the YouTube Partner Program. However, once monetising again, they reverted to clear violations of our spam and misleading metadata policies, and as a result, they have been terminated from the platform," said YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon.

Chaudhari explained that his operation capitalized on YouTube's algorithm through rapid and repeated uploads of trailers ahead of official releases.

The now-banned Indian YouTube channels no longer appear in searches, and their pages now show a message saying:

"This page isn't available. Sorry about that. Try searching for something else."