AI generated explainer videos don't need to do soyface. They just exist like a school of fish: homogeneous and in vast numbers. They will be clicked on randomly. It's fine though the total number of clicks is more than any single video would get.
Yeah, YouTube is rapidly approaching unusability along with Google... If the thumbnails bother you, there are some extensions you could try. "Hide YouTube Thumbnails" simply removes thumbnails. "Clickbait Remover for Youtube" replaces them with a random frame from the video.
As AI generated content gets easier and easier to make, more and more of youtube will become covered by it, and it will be impossible to find actual content anymore, as the AI content mills will outproduce actual creators a hundredfold. We've already seen this in art spaces that allow AI "art." Their main page quickly has become unusuable as you have to wade through thousands of identical AI art pieces to find a single actual thing made by an actual human and not just someone typing words into an algorithm. Expect to see youtube utterly unusuable soon enough, the sidebars will be filled with nothing but this and you'll never have that moment where you find a new content creator you enjoy on the site.
