YouTube adds AI tool to help recover hacked accounts

Imagine investing time, work, and money in a YouTube account, only to have it hijacked, hacked, or compromised. Such occurrences are not uncommon on social media platforms, particularly among high-profile accounts. Recovering hijacked accounts can be time-consuming since you must supply a large amount of information to show you own the account.

To relieve the burden of account recovery, YouTube has launched an AI assistance chatbot. The Hacked Channel Assistant feature helps creators re-secure their logins and regain their accounts following a hack, according to Google's YouTube support page.

With the debut of YouTube's AI help chatbot, creators now have access to a significant tool. This tool, available in the YouTube Help Center, allows you to take control of your compromised YouTube account recovery by guiding you through a set of questions and information submissions.

If all goes well, YouTube's new tool will assist you in recovering and securing the Google login credentials linked with the account. Then, it will undo any changes made to the account by hackers and walk you through best practices to avoid similar situations in the future.

Google claims the tool is only available in English, and other debugging tools are restricted to specific developers. However, it will eventually become available to all creators. It remains to be seen whether Google provides high-profile YouTube accounts with extra assistance or dedicated features.

If the tool is not currently available for you, please contact YouTube assistance using the @TeamYouTube handle on X (previously Twitter). Eligible accounts may also contact the YouTube Creator Support team for additional assistance.

The most typical approach for hackers to hijack a YouTube account is to compromise the email address linked with it. To avoid such instances, make sure your password is strong enough, difficult to guess, and frequently changed. Also, remember to enable two-factor authentication for added security.