YouTube’s copyright system has again shown how easily it can be gamed, after Silent Hill 2 creator Nubzombie said his gameplay video was struck twice by claims from tracks that appear to be AI-generated rewrites of Akira Yamaoka’s "Promise". In a video titled "A.I. IS RUINING YOUTUBE (and my life)", the creator said the first claim came from an account called "Agro memos", while a second strike arrived soon after from "詹姆斯.K", whose disputed track is also called "Promise". Kotaku and Glitched reported the same sequence of events, framing it as another example of automated enforcement being turned against the wrong target.

The oddity is not just that the claims were apparently based on near-copies of game music, but that they were wrapped in synthetic voiceovers and then fed into YouTube’s systems as if they were original rights claims. That fits a wider pattern described by coverage of Content ID and similar tools: once audio is uploaded and matched, the platform can move quickly to block, monetise or penalise a video before a human ever reviews the dispute. The result is a system that can reward opportunistic uploaders and punish ordinary creators who are using music in legitimate gameplay footage.

The first claim is especially murky because the audio trail appears to run through The Orchard, which is part of Sony Music Entertainment. Techdirt noted that some of Agro memos’ uploads are marked as "Provided to YouTube by The Orchard Enterprises", and pointed to earlier cases in which Orchard was accused of making incorrect claims over other creators’ music. The same report argued that Sony has no obvious connection to Silent Hill, which was originally released by Konami in 2001 and later remade in 2024, raising fresh questions about how such claims are being routed through the platform.

The broader problem, though, is less about one label or one account than about a system that makes abuse cheap. By layering AI voiceovers over familiar tracks, bad actors can create just enough apparent variation to feed automated enforcement, then use that machinery to hit other people’s videos with strikes or demonetisation. YouTube has long faced criticism for allowing false claims to linger, and the arrival of low-effort AI cloning tools makes that weakness even more damaging for gaming creators, who are among the most exposed to music-matching disputes.

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Source: Noah Wire Services