[happysadpanda2]

Aha! I too have seen thumbnails of videos with context clues (product brands in the thumbnail which doesn't exist under that brand in my country) yet with a video title in my native tongue, which a clear "machine translation"-feel to it.

Until I read this thread I assumed that it was the content creator doing shenanigans (low quality AI slop video mass-produced in many languages and targeting my locale with videos for my locale), but it does make so much more "sense" that it would be YT doing this.

And my reaction to those thumbnails, thinking it was the creator doing low quality AI slop, was to "reward" them with "Don't recommend this channel".

So I have been punishing innocent channels for crap that YT is doing...