I turned 30 this year. So it's the perfect age group that stood alongside YouTube, as it grew from a stupid home video clip from 20 years ago to a full-scale production hosted by the most influential people on the planet.
Since its launch in 2005, YouTube has been thick and thin on my side, offering tips and tricks on my favourite hobby, entertainment, and even moral support.
At the beginning of the year, I upgraded to one of the best OLED TVs and also bought an Apple TV 4K. I've always been watching YouTube on the big screen before these upgrades, but over the past few months I've started to notice strange patterns in YouTube algorithms.
At first I thought the common images I was watching across YouTube had something to do with the Apple TV app, but more AI-generated thumbnails started pop up in searches.
I thought that was my problem. That was until May read a new report from Garbage Day Newsletter, claiming that four of the four most subscribed YouTube channels “featured AI-generated material in all videos.”
YouTube has AI issues
According to The Garbage Day Newsletter, “In May, four of the top 10 YouTube channels with the most subscribers with AI-generated material in all videos. Not all channels use the same AI program. There are signs that include elements of human maids, but none of these channels are uploading videos that are fully created without AI.
The fastest growing channel is called Masters of Prophecy. This has over 31 million subscribers, despite the fact that the first video wasn't even a year ago. The channels were filled with AI-generated music and thumbnails, and growth was exponential. In February, the Masters of Prophecy fell below 1,000 subscribers.
Interestingly, YouTube is not the only creative outlet flooded by AI. Just yesterday we reported on The Velvet Sundown, an AI-generated rock band that appears to have over 400,000 listeners on Spotify each month.
Music is not the only content generated by AI on YouTube. Chick of Honor is a channel with over 10 million subscribers, and all of its content is AI-generated shorts with cute animals starring the lead character.
Despite having over 10 million subscribers, opinions do not necessarily reflect a huge audience. Most of the channel's shorts have audiences between 20,000 and 700,000.
Please take a look
The tip of the iceberg
I'm thinking about YouTube and worry that it will be the end of what once became great when the AI-generated channels begin to break through, about how it went from the most authentic form of video content to the millions of high quality videos released on the platform every day.
As video generation models like VEO 3 continue to improve, AI video is becoming more and more prominent. In fact, I think most of us have seen AI-generated videos on social media last week and don't even realize that they're fake.
When YouTube's AI content becomes standard, there are concerns that it will be harder to source videos from real content creators than to find an alternative that has been generated by AI.
This is just the beginning of AI videos, but if YouTube continues to exist, if it has completely the human element that made it so great in the first place, Google will need to find a way to distinguish AI videos from reality.
