Ellie here from the PV team. I’ve been testing AI generated thumbnails behind the scenes for a few months. The tools kept improving, but none felt good enough to actually upload, until recently.
The sticking point was always generating Justin’s face. Gemini’s Nano Banana nailed the backgrounds but couldn’t get him right, even with a huge folder of reference photos to pull from. Since the ChatGPT Images 2.0 update, we’re finally getting versions of Justin that look almost exactly like the real thing, good enough to test live.
So we started A/B testing the AI thumbnails against our usual ones on every upload. On one recent video, our regular thumbnail pulled a 29.3% watch time share and the two AI versions came in at 36.3% and 34.4%. They’re close calls, but the AI ones keep coming out on top, and that consistency is the part I find interesting.
