A continuing growth in popularity for Artificial Intelligence (AI) has led to many debates and criticisms. One of which is the criticism of it being used to create content, specifically on YouTube.
More and more creators are relying on AI to write scripts for their videos, to create avatars for them in place of face-cams, and even create thumbnails. Youtuber Oompaville (Caleb Phelps) highlighted this issue on his own channel titled Sssniperwolf Is Ruined…
Creators using AI to essentially make content for them are being accused of making content farms. Content farms produce large amounts of often sub-par content.
On YouTube, more views and clicks means more money (a tad more complex since the “ad-pocolypse” situation but that’s a whole different can of worms).
So, gaming YouTubers to reaction channels and many in between have discovered AI content is a quick way to make money with little to no effort.
YouTube has always had content farms – they just existed in different forms. The YouTube that many of us grew up with was filled with vloggers and gamers, such as Zoella and PewDiePie.
These channels had their own kind of content farms. Vloggers would film their daily or weekly life over and over again – there’s no need to search for new content if routine proves popular. The same goes for gaming channels.
A let’s play series could span across several videos. That’s one game creating multiple videos, then you move onto the next game and repeat. As much as people loved to say that YouTube wasn’t a real job, a few years ago it was difficult to gain an online presence.
The creators I mentioned, along with plenty others, all had talent in entertaining viewers that went hand-in-hand with content farms.
YouTube as we know it is changing
Now, it seems as though talent isn’t a requirement. With social media becoming increasingly important in our daily lives, garnering an online audience is a lot easier than it used to be.
And if you don’t have the entertaining talent? Don’t worry! AI can and will write scripts for creators to read from, based on what people will watch.
These AI-created videos aren’t something that people want to watch, but something they will watch. With the controversy surrounding AI, any mention or discussion of it in content is guaranteed to get clicks and attention.
That then turns into income for creators, who will keep using AI content to get mentioned.
KwebbelKop (Jordi) uses AI scripts in his gaming videos too, as well as an animated avatar (or V-Tuber) in place of a face-cam.
In his Twitter bio, Jordi claims he is “leading the way in AI content creation tools, V-Tubers, AI influencers & game development.”
AI-generated YouTube thumbnails are something else that KwebbelKop is working on.
Jordi claims via a tweet: “views per video are actually up since I switched to ai content. On all platforms.” He more than embraces his use of AI which seems to be doing well for his channel.
Featured Image Credit: Alexander Shatov on Unsplash
Second year student journalist studying Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Journalism Studies.
Writer for Brig and Discovery Music, Chief Sub Editor for Brig
