YouTube is continuing to lean into AI to help make content, and that next YouTube Short you watch might not contain real footage of its creator. CEO Neal Mohan announced the latest move in this trend in his annual letter on Wednesday: Creators will soon be able to make Shorts using their own AI likeness.

«This year you’ll be able to create a Short using your own likeness, produce games with a simple text prompt and experiment with music,» Mohan wrote. «Throughout this evolution, AI will remain a tool for expression, not a replacement.»

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YouTube’s Shorts, which are short-form videos designed for quick viewing, draw roughly 200 billion daily views, Mohan said. YouTube hasn’t provided details about the new AI tool or how it will fit in the current Shorts ecosystem.

Google, YouTube’s parent company, announced in September the addition of its generative AI tool, Veo 3, to YouTube Shorts, allowing anyone to create AI-generated videos, further putting the platform on a more competitive footing with TikTok.

Not all AI is welcomed

When it comes to AI-generated likenesses, YouTube may soon allow creators to use them, but that doesn’t mean they can copy others’ images. The company rolled out likeness-detection technology last fall to help prevent unauthorized use of a creator’s face or voice in videos.

As YouTube adds AI creation tools, it is also targeting AI slop and misleading deepfakes.

«It’s becoming harder to detect what’s real and what’s AI-generated,» Mohan wrote. «This is particularly critical when it comes to deepfakes.» 

The company’s policy for policing and removing AI-generated content from its open platform continues to face challenges.

«To reduce the spread of low-quality AI content,» he wrote, «we’re actively building on our established systems that have been very successful in combating spam and clickbait and reducing the spread of low-quality, repetitive content.»

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is mix of challenging and straightforward. Hope you know your former sports shows! If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Not lazy.

Green group hint: Pete Carroll is another one.

Blue group hint: Turn on the TV.

Purple group hint: Hidden team names.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: An energetic person.

Green group: Head coaches who won a Super Bowl.

Blue group: Former ESPN shows.

Purple group: Ends in an NBA team, in singular form.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is an energetic person. The four answers are dynamo, fireball, go-getter and spark plug.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is head coaches who won a Super Bowl. The four answers are Don Shula, John Madden, Mike Tomlin and Sean Payton.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is former ESPN shows. The four answers are Around The Horn, Dream Job, Playmakers and Stump the Schwab.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ends in an NBA team, in singular form. The four answers are empty net, Joe Buck, The Yankee Clipper and Tony Hawk.

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Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle could be tough. Some of the answers are long and tough to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story. 

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Ode to joy.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Because I’m happy.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints, but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

• BOLD, BOLDS, CASE, HEAT, LONE, SIEVE, THEN, THEE, HAVE, HAVEN, YODEL, YODELS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

• BLISS, ECSTASY, ELATION, EUPHORIA, RHAPSODY

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is SEVENTHHEAVEN. To find it, start with the S that’s the very bottom letter on the far-left vertical row, and wind up.

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