Good question! Indeed you can run the challenge code using headless Chromium and it will function [1]. They are constantly updating the challenge however, and may add additional checks in the future. I suppose Google wants to make it more expensive overall to scrape Youtube to deter the most egregious bots.
I agree, in some cases and depending on LLM endpoint, some money may need to be spent to enable ripping. But is it cheaper than paying Youtube/Google? That is the question.
[1] https://github.com/LuanRT/BgUtils