YouTube has begun a global rollout of an AI avatar tool for Shorts, allowing creators to produce videos featuring a digital clone of themselves without filming fresh footage.
The feature, first announced by YouTube CEO Neal Mohan in January 2026, is now available worldwide for users aged 18 and above, excluding those based in Europe.
Creators record a short live selfie video, capturing their face from multiple angles while reading prompted lines aloud, to generate a photorealistic personal avatar.
The avatar is built using the Veo AI models of Google, which animate lip movements, facial expressions, and hand gestures based on a typed text prompt from the creator.
How to set up your avatar
- Open the YouTube app and tap the Create (+) button
- 2Tap the Gemini icon and select “Create video”
- 3Choose “Make a video with my avatar”
- 4Record a live selfie and read the on-screen voice prompts
- 5Preview and confirm — setup only needs to be done once
Each AI-generated clip can be up to eight seconds long, and creators can stitch multiple clips together to produce longer Shorts content from a single text prompt.
Avatars can also be inserted into existing eligible Shorts using the Remix menu, via an option labelled “Add me to this scene” within the YouTube Create app.
YouTube confirmed that the selfie video and voice recording submitted to build the avatar are used solely for avatar creation and for no other purpose.
All content produced using an avatar carries visible AI labels, including SynthID and C2PA markers, to make clear to viewers that the video is AI-generated.
Deleting an avatar removes the original selfie video and voice data from YouTube’s servers, though any previously published avatar videos remain unless manually deleted by the creator.
The tool is available through both the main YouTube app and the YouTube Create app, with the setup process required only once per creator account.
The launch follows YouTube’s earlier introduction of Veo-powered video generation tools and forms part of CEO Neal Mohan’s broader 2026 AI strategy for the platform.
