Shorts overlay labels steal caption space

YouTube's Shorts AI overlay sits on the picture. Burned captions that live in the same band get stolen. Keep speech type out of the overlay zone, off the right rail, and above the bottom chrome. This is the edit. The policy — overlay on Shorts, below the player on long-form, labels not a ranking hit — is YouTube Shorts AI label is an overlay.

The 27 May 2026 YouTube Blog put the photoreal and meaningfully altered label on the Short itself. YouTube did not publish a pixel spec. Do not invent one. Design to objects. Check the live player.

The Shorts frame is already crowded

A 1080×1920 export is not a finished layout. Shorts composites furniture on those pixels: a right-hand action column, a bottom identity row, a description field, sometimes a subscribe control. Burned-in captions that sit on the true bottom of the frame are under that furniture. The safe area is the leftover rectangle. It is not a percentage you copied last year.

The May 2026 AI label is extra furniture that only appears when the file is photorealistic or meaningfully AI-altered. A cartoon Short may never pay this tax. A talking-head generate will. Plan the talking-head as if the overlay is always there. If YouTube later puts the mark in a slightly different corner, you still kept the line off the edges.

What you cannot do: finish captions for a 16:9 lower third, crop to 9:16, and hope. The long-form AI label sits below the player, off the picture. The Shorts label sits on the picture. The same master is two layouts. Shorts overlay vs long-form AI label is the QA checklist. This page is where the type goes.

What you also cannot do: treat TikTok's caption map as YouTube's. TikTok's composer caption steals bottom stack as it grows. Reels has its own username-and-audio row. Shorts has subscribe and a description field that is not TikTok's. Place once per destination, or place in the intersection: mid-lower, off the right rail, not on the last slice of the frame.

Where the overlay fights type

YouTube has not given creators a box in Studio that says "we will draw the AI mark here." Public coverage of the May 2026 change described a small on-video mark — "AI" plus an information symbol — on Shorts. Treat it as a persistent badge on the picture for photoreal files, in the same family as other player chrome: small, readable, easy to glance at, easy to cover a karaoke punch.

Practical collisions:

• Karaoke captions hugging the bottom. The first word of the hook is the one the overlay will eat. Move the caption block up.
• Price, URL, or "link in bio" as burned type on the lower third. Same collision. Put commerce type in the mid-frame or in the description, not under chrome.
• An Article 50 paste line in the same band as the YouTube badge. Two legal-ish objects on top of each other. Offset them. The EU line is yours to place; the YouTube overlay is not.
• A face sitting in the lower third with captions across the chin. Chrome plus overlay plus type is three layers on the mouth. Recompose. Head in the upper third is the Shorts default for a reason.

Do not solve this by shrinking captions until they are unreadable. Solve it by leaving air. Versely Caption Studio has 45 CSS presets in 9 groups × 5 variants; BASIC burn-in is the 1× family, DYNAMIC is 2×. Preset is not placement. A loud preset in a dead zone is still dead.

If you also burn an EU icon, the Commission wants it where no intervening overlay elements exist, perceivable at first exposure. YouTube's AI badge is an intervening overlay. Place the EU mark where the Shorts chrome is not, or accept that a platform overlay can sit on it and move the Commission file until a phone preview is clean.

A placement pass that survives the badge

Do this on every photoreal Short, in the editor, before upload.

1. Lock ratio first. 9:16 is the Short. Do not caption a 16:9 and crop.
2. Put speech captions in the mid-lower band, not on the bottom edge, not on the right rail. Caption timing is a separate problem; this pass is only geography.
3. Assume an AI overlay will appear if you ticked altered content or if YouTube auto-detects photoreal AI. Leave a quiet corner. You will not get a second timeline after ingest.
4. Preview on a phone-shaped player. A desktop canvas lies. If a word sits under where badges usually sit, move the words.
5. Keep the EU line and the YouTube badge from stacking. Offset. First exposure for Article 50 is still the first seconds, not a description tap.

Add captions to video is the finishing step. A UGC video generator will not know where YouTube will draw the mark. Veo 3.1 will not either. The take is eight seconds (or four, or six) with native audio. The overlay is YouTube's. Your job is the leftover rectangle.

Labels alone do not impact recommendations or monetization eligibility — YouTube, 27 May 2026. Moving captions so they remain readable is not a ranking trick. It is literacy. Skipping the checkbox to keep the overlay off is a different, worse plan: auto-detect can still apply the label, and you lose the record of intent.

What not to burn in that zone

Do not put the only readable claim of the ad under chrome. If the line is the offer, it has to survive the badge.

Do not put the only Article 50 disclosure under the YouTube overlay and call first exposure satisfied. A covered mark is a mark a person did not perceive.

Do not use platform auto-captions as the legal line. Auto-captions transcribe speech. They will not typeset "This video is AI-generated" unless someone said it.

Do not copy a TikTok caption preset onto a Short and ship. The chrome maps differ. The AI overlay is YouTube-specific for this problem.

If you want captions, the file, and a text overlay on one timeline, sign up and treat the Shorts cut as a layout, not as a crop. Check the posted file once on a phone. If the overlay ate a word, you did not finish.

The policy page tells you the badge is on the picture. This page tells you to stop putting the sentence there.

FAQ

Where exactly does YouTube put the Shorts AI overlay?

YouTube has not published a pixel map. The 27 May 2026 blog says the label appears as an overlay on the video. Design off the bottom edge and the right rail, then check the live Shorts player. A third-party overlay template will go stale.

Do I need to move captions on animated Shorts?

The prominent overlay is for photorealistic and meaningfully AI-altered content. Unrealistic or animated disclosure can sit in the expanded description. You still have ordinary Shorts chrome. Place captions for that chrome either way.

Can I put captions at the top to dodge the overlay?

Top can work if it clears search and other header chrome. It can also fight a face in the upper third. Mid-lower with air is the default. Top is a backup when the lower band is already full of a pack shot you cannot move.