YouTube has tightened the rules governing which creators can earn advertising revenue from artificial intelligence-generated videos, moving to strip monetization from channels that mass-produce low-quality AI content, use manipulative tactics to boost views, or deploy AI avatars to dispense advice in sensitive fields such as medicine, law and finance.

The revised guidelines, updates to the company’s YouTube Partner Program policies, took effect July 16 and were confirmed this week by outlets tracking the platform’s ongoing effort to curb what YouTube and much of the industry have taken to calling “AI slop” — low-effort, formulaic content produced at scale with minimal human involvement.

Three categories now off-limits for ad revenue

YouTube outlined three specific types of content that will no longer qualify for advertising payouts. The first covers videos that are mechanically mass-produced with little substantive variation between uploads, whether generated using AI tools or computer-generated imagery. The second targets content designed primarily to provoke a strong emotional reaction or shock value in order to drive views, including staged rescue or crisis videos, regardless of whether AI was used to create them. The third category applies to channels using AI-generated avatars modeled on real people to offer guidance on financial investments, medical diagnoses or legal matters, areas where YouTube has said the risk of misleading viewers is especially high.

Matt Halprin, YouTube’s head of trust and safety, said the company’s underlying concern is less about the use of AI itself and more about how that technology is being deployed. “While AI tools can assist creators in producing high-quality content, we will apply strict criteria to channels that rely on automated systems to churn out content lacking narrative structure and human creativity,” Halprin said.

Building on a policy shift from last year

The latest changes build on a foundation YouTube laid roughly a year earlier. In July 2025, the platform renamed its long-standing “duplicate content” policy to “mass-produced content,” a shift aimed at capturing a broader range of formulaic AI-assisted videos beyond simple copy-paste duplication. That earlier revision established the groundwork for restricting monetization on channels built around repetitive templates, recycled clips or scripts read verbatim from other sources.

According to reporting on the policy’s rollout, YouTube’s enforcement typically follows a graduated approach for channels flagged under the mass-produced or repetitive content rules, beginning with a warning before escalating to a temporary suspension and, eventually, permanent removal from the Partner Program for repeat violations. Channels affected by enforcement decisions are generally given a window to appeal, with the platform recommending appeals include a short video demonstrating genuine human creative involvement in the disputed content, rather than relying solely on a written explanation.

A platform-wide quality concern

YouTube’s push against AI slop follows growing internal and public concern about the volume of low-effort automated content flooding the platform’s recommendation systems. Earlier this year, the company removed a wave of channels from the Partner Program in a single enforcement action, targeting accounts that had collectively built enormous audiences and generated substantial advertising income through formulaic, templated video production rather than original creative work.

The stakes tied to content quality are also financial for YouTube itself. The platform generated $9.88 billion in advertising revenue during the first quarter of 2026, according to Alphabet’s earnings report, an increase of nearly 11% year-over-year but a figure that fell short of Wall Street’s expectations. Maintaining advertiser confidence in the quality of content surrounding their ads has become an increasingly central part of YouTube’s strategy as competition for ad dollars across video platforms intensifies.

AI use itself remains permitted

YouTube has been careful to frame the updated rules as targeting a narrower category of behavior rather than restricting AI-assisted content broadly. Halprin has said the company recognizes that AI tools can meaningfully expand what individual creators are able to produce, provided the resulting videos retain a genuine creative and narrative contribution from the person behind the channel. The distinction YouTube is attempting to draw, according to Halprin, is between creators using AI to enhance original work and operators using automation to generate large volumes of near-identical videos purely to capture advertising revenue.

Under the current framework, AI-generated or AI-assisted videos remain eligible for monetization so long as they offer original value to viewers, are not repetitive or templated, and are properly labeled when required. YouTube has also implemented disclosure requirements for altered or synthetic content, requiring creators to flag AI involvement through settings in YouTube Studio in certain circumstances.

Industry reaction and what comes next

The policy update has drawn attention across the creator economy, given how significantly automated AI production tools have lowered the barrier to launching new monetized channels in recent years. Industry estimates cited in coverage of the shift suggest a substantial share of newly monetized YouTube channels now operate without an on-camera host, relying instead on AI-generated narration, imagery or avatars — a trend the platform’s updated guidelines appear directly aimed at reshaping.

For creators and channel operators who have built businesses around high-volume automated content production, the revised rules are likely to force a reassessment of how they use AI tools going forward. YouTube has signaled it intends to continue refining its enforcement approach as AI production tools evolve, positioning the update as an ongoing effort rather than a one-time policy change.

The company has not indicated whether further revisions are planned in the near term, but its repeated policy updates over the past year suggest the platform intends to keep adjusting its monetization standards as the volume and sophistication of AI-generated video content continues to grow across the industry.

This article was written by

Follow

Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

While this article may sound like financial advice, please observe that the author is not a CFA or in any way licensed to give financial advice. It may be structured as such, but it is not financial advice. Investors are required and expected to do their own due diligence and research prior to any investment.

Short-term trading, options trading/investment and futures trading are potentially extremely risky investment styles. They generally are not appropriate for someone with limited capital, limited investment experience, or a lack of understanding for the necessary risk tolerance involved.

I own the European/Scandinavian tickers (not the ADRs) of all European/Scandinavian companies listed in my articles. I own the Canadian tickers of all Canadian stocks I write about.

Please note that investing in European/Non-US stocks comes with withholding tax risks specific to the company’s domicile as well as your personal situation. Investors should always consult a tax professional as to the overall impact of dividend withholding taxes and ways to mitigate these.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

The Culture Ministry has chosen 76 cultural treasures in Thailand to enhance tourism and support local economies through the “Unseen Thai Thai” program, including destinations, festivals, and community experiences.

Key Points

• The Culture Ministry has chosen 76 cultural treasures through the “Unseen Thai Thai” program to boost cultural tourism and local economies via the “ROOT to RICH” concept. This includes 60 destinations and 16 festivals, showcasing diverse cultural sites like ancient rock paintings and unique community traditions.
• Selected attractions range from the 3,000-year-old Pha Daeng rock paintings in Kanchanaburi to Krabi’s batik heritage. The ministry aims to enhance these cultural sites and festivals, promote them digitally, and develop tourism routes linking various provinces.
• Local community participation, including cultural entrepreneurs and folk artists, is encouraged to transform cultural heritage into sustainable economic opportunities. Full details and an official guidebook can be accessed online for travelers and researchers interested in Thailand’s rich cultural heritage.

The Culture Ministry has selected 76 cultural treasures from across Thailand under its “Unseen Thai Thai” program to promote cultural tourism and create new economic opportunities for local communities through the “ROOT to RICH” concept. 

Culture Minister Sabeeda Thaised said the selections include 60 cultural tourism destinations and 16 festivals, traditions, and community lifestyle experiences. They range from the 3,000-year-old Pha Daeng rock paintings in Kanchanaburi and the Pha Phueng Stone Forest in Kalasin to the laterite temple in Kamphaeng Phet, Krabi’s batik heritage, and the Fire Polo tradition in Chaiyaphum. 

The ministry plans to upgrade selected attractions and festivals, expand digital promotion, develop cultural tourism routes linking destinations within and between provinces, and encourage participation by local communities, cultural entrepreneurs, folk artists, and the private sector. The campaign seeks to turn cultural heritage into long-term economic opportunities while supporting local economies.

The complete list of the 76 selected cultural attractions and the official “Unseen Thai Thai” guidebook are available online at https://online.fliphtml5.com/bookcase/sqrxv/. The publication features each province’s selected cultural attraction or tradition, providing an information resource for travelers, researchers, and anyone interested in Thailand’s cultural heritage.

Source : Culture Ministry Unveils 76 Unseen Thai Treasures

Other People are Reading

Founded in 2008, Global X is a sponsor of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). We are distinguished by our Thematic Growth, Income, and International ETFs. Explore our insights on the trends and themes shaping global markets – from technology to commodities to emerging economies – at globalxfunds.com/research. Global X ETFs is a member of the Mirae Asset Global Investments Group. Important disclosures: globalxfunds.com/privacy

Wordle fans searching for help with Sunday’s puzzle can find the full rundown of hints, clues and the confirmed solution below. Today’s puzzle, numbered 1,863 by The New York Times, offered a moderately tricky word that stumped some players relying on common vowel-heavy starting guesses.

Today’s Wordle answer

The solution to Wordle #1,863 for Sunday, July 26, 2026, is GRAPE.

The word is a common five-letter noun referring to a smooth-skinned fruit frequently used in winemaking, and it contains no repeated letters. According to the New York Times’ WordleBot tracking tool, the average player solved today’s puzzle in 3.9 guesses under the standard “easy” mode, or 3.8 guesses when playing under Wordle’s stricter “hard mode” rules, which require players to reuse any correctly identified letters in subsequent guesses.

Hints for players who haven’t solved it yet

For readers still working through today’s puzzle without wanting the answer spoiled outright, several outlets circulated a consistent set of clues throughout the day. The word contains two of the five vowels in the English alphabet. There are no repeated letters anywhere in the five-letter sequence. And the word includes three of the five most commonly used letters in the English language, a detail Wordle-tracking sites often cite to help players narrow down likely candidates without giving away the full solution.

A more direct thematic hint offered by several sites described the word as “a smooth-skinned fruit often used for making wine,” pointing players toward produce-related five-letter words before the reveal.

Why today’s puzzle tripped some players up

Wordle puzzles that follow common letter patterns can be deceptively difficult, and today’s was no exception. GRAPE belongs to a large family of five-letter words that follow a similar “consonant-R-A-consonant-E” structure, a pattern the New York Times has used repeatedly since Wordle’s rise to mainstream popularity in 2022. Recent Wordle solutions following that same general shape have included BRACE, BRAKE, BRAVE, CRANE, CRAVE, CRAZE, DRAPE, ERASE, GRACE, GRADE, GRAVE, GRAZE, FRAME and DRAKE, according to a running list of past Wordle answers compiled by puzzle trackers. That overlap means players who correctly identified the general letter pattern early still had more than a dozen plausible words to choose from before landing on the correct one, a common source of frustration in Wordle’s community-driven strategy discussions.

Puzzle sites that track daily Wordle solutions note that words sharing common suffixes or letter patterns tend to produce higher average guess counts across the player base, since early feedback can rule out individual letters without narrowing the field to a single obvious answer. Today’s 3.8-to-3.9 average guess count falls within a fairly typical range for Wordle, which generally sees average solve times cluster between 3.5 and 4.5 guesses depending on how common or obscure the day’s word is.

How Wordle works, for newer players

Wordle, created by software engineer Josh Wardle in 2021 before being acquired by The New York Times, remains one of the most widely played daily word games in the world. Players get six attempts to guess a hidden five-letter word, with the game providing color-coded feedback after each guess: a green tile indicates a correct letter in the correct position, a yellow tile indicates a correct letter in the wrong position, and a gray tile indicates the letter does not appear in the word at all. The game resets once daily at midnight local time, giving all players worldwide the same puzzle to solve within a 24-hour window, a design choice widely credited with helping fuel the game’s viral spread through shared, spoiler-free results grids posted on social media.

Wordle strategy guides commonly recommend opening with a word containing a strong mix of common vowels and consonants — words such as CRANE, SLATE, ADIEU or STARE are frequently cited as strong starting guesses — to maximize the amount of information gained from the very first attempt.

Other NYT Games puzzles today

Wordle remains just one entry in the Times’ growing suite of daily puzzles, which has become a significant driver of the newspaper’s digital subscription business in recent years. Sunday’s lineup also included Connections, a category-sorting word puzzle; Connections: Sports Edition; Strands, a themed word-search style puzzle; and the Mini Crossword, a condensed daily crossword aimed at quick play sessions. Players looking for an additional challenge beyond Wordle also had access to Quordle, a popular Wordle spinoff not affiliated with the Times that requires solving four five-letter words simultaneously within nine total guesses, along with harder “Chill” and “Extreme” difficulty variants.

Looking ahead

With Sunday’s puzzle solved, attention among daily players typically shifts toward tracking recently used answers to sharpen strategy for future puzzles, since the Times avoids immediate word repeats. Puzzle-tracking sites maintain running lists of past Wordle solutions specifically to help players rule out recently used words when narrowing down guesses on especially difficult days.

For now, Wordle #1,863 closes out with GRAPE as the confirmed answer, a solve time in line with the puzzle’s typical difficulty range, and yet another reminder of how a shared, simple word game continues to draw a devoted daily audience nearly five years after its debut.

SYDNEY — Tim Tszyu delivered the biggest win of his career in front of his hometown fans on Sunday, outpointing former unified welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. over 12 rounds in a middleweight bout that ended with Spence announcing his retirement moments after the final bell.

Tszyu won by unanimous decision at Afterpay Arena in Sydney Olympic Park, with all three judges scoring the fight in his favor: 118-110, 117-111 and 117-111. The victory improved Tszyu’s professional record to 28-3 with 18 knockouts, while Spence, who came into the bout with a record of 28-1, dropped to 28-2.

A crossroads fight for two former champions

The bout carried significant stakes for both fighters, each hoping to reestablish himself after recent setbacks. Spence, 36, was making his first appearance in the ring in nearly three years, following a lopsided ninth-round stoppage loss to Terence Crawford in their 2023 undisputed welterweight championship bout — a defeat many considered the first sign of decline for a fighter once regarded as one of the sport’s pound-for-pound best. Sunday’s fight also marked a significant jump in weight class for Spence, who moved up two divisions from welterweight to the 160-pound middleweight limit to face Tszyu.

Tszyu, 31, entered the bout looking to bounce back from a difficult recent stretch that had seen him go 3-3 in his previous six fights. A former super welterweight titleholder fighting in his home country, Tszyu carried the weight of expectations from thousands of Australian fans hoping to see him reclaim his standing among the sport’s top fighters.

How the fight played out

Spence started fast, working behind his speed advantage and pressing the action in the opening rounds. Tszyu answered with a heavy right hand that rocked Spence in the first round, an exchange that set the tone for a competitive but increasingly one-sided contest. Spence had moments of success in the second and third rounds, connecting with hard left hands and remaining the more active fighter at times, but Tszyu steadily began to take control from the fourth round onward.

By the second half of the fight, Tszyu was landing the harder and more frequent punches, wobbling Spence on multiple occasions with lead and counter right hands as the challenger’s activity level dropped. Spence, dealing with what commentators described as visible ring rust after his lengthy layoff, remained competitive enough to bank rounds on some scorecards but was unable to turn the fight back in his favor down the stretch. He held on through the final round to hear the scorecards, which were unanimous in Tszyu’s favor.

Tszyu reflects on an emotional night

Tszyu, who has moved up to the 160-pound division this year, was visibly emotional in his post-fight interview, calling the victory the best win of his career and describing the mental preparation that went into facing a fighter of Spence’s caliber. “160 is my new division and I feel strong,” Tszyu said, addressing the crowd after the win. He said the challenge of preparing for the bout weighed on him in the lead-up to fight night, at one point saying he had experienced “sleepless nights” wondering how he would handle facing a fighter of Spence’s stature. He credited his performance to persistence through a difficult stretch of his career, telling the arena, “I want to be the definition of resilience.”

Looking ahead, Tszyu said he hopes the win positions him for a shot at a middleweight world title, name-checking Cuban veteran Erislandy Lara as a potential future opponent. He added that, in his view, beating a fighter of Spence’s résumé carried more significance than a title belt itself.

Spence calls time on his career

Spence, who built his reputation as one of the sport’s most feared welterweights before his loss to Crawford, confirmed in his own post-fight comments that Sunday’s bout marked the end of his boxing career. Speaking calmly despite the loss, Spence said he was at peace with his decision and grateful for what the sport had given him. “For sure, I’m retiring,” Spence said. “I’ve got my faculties intact. My money is good and working for itself, so everything is good, man.”

Spence went on to reflect on his time in the sport, telling reporters he felt fortunate to walk away from boxing in good health and with his family by his side. He also offered praise for Tszyu’s performance, calling it a good showing and saying the fight had answered lingering questions about where he stood as a fighter following his layoff and the jump in weight class.

A statement win for Tszyu’s career

Sunday’s result adds to a rebuilding narrative for Tszyu, who had struggled to find consistency in his last several outings before Sunday’s win. Beating a fighter of Spence’s stature, even at 36 years old and following a long layoff, is likely to boost Tszyu’s standing in the middleweight division as he pursues a path toward a world title opportunity.

The card, promoted under a “USA vs. Australia” banner, also featured a co-main event lightweight bout in which unbeaten prospect Ahmad Reda defeated veteran Paul Fleming by unanimous decision. The originally scheduled co-main event between Stephen Fulton and Liam Wilson was scrapped after Fulton missed weight by six and a half pounds.

For Spence, Sunday’s loss closes the book on a career that included stints as a unified welterweight champion and a place among the sport’s pound-for-pound elite before his decline in recent years. For Tszyu, it opens the door to bigger opportunities in a new weight class, with a world title shot now squarely in his sights.