Does dimming or cropping a clip need a YouTube AI label?
YouTube lists dimming as a colour adjustment needing no label; cropping is not listed either way. The label turns on realistic synthetic content.
Dimming a real clip needs no label: YouTube's page on altered or synthetic content lists colour adjustments, special effects filters and caption creation among edits that do not require disclosure. Cropping is not named on either list, but a framing change does not make the clip a realistic synthetic scene, so the label question turns on the footage itself, not the crop. Sume's video filter does a whole-clip luma multiply with dim and a fractional rectangle with crop.
Against the exempt list
YouTube Help, read 2026-10-04, lists as not needing disclosure: beauty filters, colour adjustments, special effects filters such as background blur, caption creation, cloning your own voice for voiceovers, and video sharpening, upscaling or repair. It lists as needing a label realistic content that could mislead, such as making it look as if a real person said or did something, or AI-generated extra footage of a real place.
| Edit | Sume surface | YouTube list entry |
|---|---|---|
| Darken the clip | video-filter dim, amount in (0, 1] | Colour adjustment, listed as exempt |
| Crop to 9:16 | video-filter crop fractions | Not named on either list; no realistic synthetic scene is created |
| Burn captions | video-captions | Caption creation, listed as exempt |
| Generate a realistic scene | video router | Realistic generated content: disclose |
Where it can go wrong
Cropping an AI-generated clip does not remove the need to disclose it. The question depends on the content, not the tool that touched it last. Run the free check endpoint first (POST /v1/video-filter/check), which validates the program without creating a job. Then submit; the encode costs $0.02 per job per the docs, and the source can be up to 300 s.
Sources
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Written by Sume