One of Gaming's Biggest YouTubers Wants To Replace Himself With AI (wired.com) 33
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Jordi Van DenBussche used to devote every waking hour to building his presence on social media. The gaming creator, better known as Kwebbelkop, would labor 24/7 onhis YouTube channelcoming up with video ideas, shooting them, distributing them. He did this while courting brand deals and doing the other work integral to his survival on the platform. Five years ago, he ran into a problem. "Every time I wanted to take a holiday or I needed some time for myself, I couldn't really do that, because my entire business would stop," he says. It's an issue known as the "key person problem." Without Van Den Bussche on camera, the entire Kwebbelkop enterprise didn't work. He was too busy making videos to think about how to scale his business, and too tired to create videos. He needed a break: Around 2018, like many other YouTubers, he experienced significant burnout.
The burnout sparked a change in mindset. He began thinking about what would benefit him and what would benefit the creator industry -- which often relies on milking the on-camera presence of an individual until they reach a breaking point, then finding another person seeking fame and fortune. He came up with a solution: a series of AI tools designed to create and upload videos, practically without his involvement. "I'm retired from being an influencer," he says. "I've had a lovely career. I had a lot of fun. I want to take things to the next level. And that means making this brand live on forever."
Van Den Bussche's AI influencer platform, which launched this week after a suitably excitable level of hype on Twitter from its creator, is his attempt to make that happen. It comprises two versions of an AI tool. The first is trained on a creator's likeness -- their on-camera performances and what they say in videos -- and is used to create new content. It appears to be similar to Forever Voices,the controversial AI tool behind the CarynAI virtual influencer, which outsourced maintaining connections with fans on behalf of creators. The other involves simplifying the act of creation as much as possible by taking simple prompts -- such as "turn this article into a video formatted like an interview involving two people" -- and producing the end result. (The latter is similar toa tool called QuickVid, which has seen some early adoption.) Van Den Bussche won't reveal much about how the tools were built, but regardless of their origins they're coming at a critical time for generative AI and its impacts on how people work. And Van Den Bussche's way of doing things could have lasting impacts on creators on YouTube and beyond.
The burnout sparked a change in mindset. He began thinking about what would benefit him and what would benefit the creator industry -- which often relies on milking the on-camera presence of an individual until they reach a breaking point, then finding another person seeking fame and fortune. He came up with a solution: a series of AI tools designed to create and upload videos, practically without his involvement. "I'm retired from being an influencer," he says. "I've had a lovely career. I had a lot of fun. I want to take things to the next level. And that means making this brand live on forever."
Van Den Bussche's AI influencer platform, which launched this week after a suitably excitable level of hype on Twitter from its creator, is his attempt to make that happen. It comprises two versions of an AI tool. The first is trained on a creator's likeness -- their on-camera performances and what they say in videos -- and is used to create new content. It appears to be similar to Forever Voices,the controversial AI tool behind the CarynAI virtual influencer, which outsourced maintaining connections with fans on behalf of creators. The other involves simplifying the act of creation as much as possible by taking simple prompts -- such as "turn this article into a video formatted like an interview involving two people" -- and producing the end result. (The latter is similar toa tool called QuickVid, which has seen some early adoption.) Van Den Bussche won't reveal much about how the tools were built, but regardless of their origins they're coming at a critical time for generative AI and its impacts on how people work. And Van Den Bussche's way of doing things could have lasting impacts on creators on YouTube and beyond.
Nothing lasts forever. (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, a youtuber is not a brand, it cannot survive on its own.
The reason a channel stop or flop when the character is no longer present is because the character is what people come to see, and they have built a fan base rather than a brand, once the character is gone - there's no fans.
And that's another thing. This influencer thing is a trend, it's a dying one because there are so many trying to be the next hot thing. But they all have one thing in common, they literally bring nothing to the table, sure - to a bunch of fans they are entertaining, the reason they are popular is for the same reasons certain actors are popular, but actors burn out too, they also get bored and want to broaden their portfolio by trying to overreach their range of expertise. Some can get away with it because they just have the talent to do so, but no matter how good they are, they all fade away at some point.
You can't compare an individual on youtube or in the movies to a product like say a Lamp, a car, or any other items, so for that reason I don't see it as a "brand". It won't be marketable to a new audience as long as there are no longer the "connection" that built that popularity to begin with. It's nothing people can use for anything, it's essentially just entertainment for the moment and our time, nothing more.
Re:Nothing lasts forever. (Score:4, Insightful)
This influencer thing is a trend, it's a dying one because there are so many trying to be the next hot thing.
I appreciate the enthusiasm, but this opinion is wrong. The singular influencer may be a trend, but the idea of an influencer is a well-founded tactic in the marketing industry, and the marketing industry is not going anywhere anytime soon. Just like musicians, athletes, and actors are used for their fame to sell products, so will youtubers and other online content creators be used for their fame to sell products. Online content creators have the advantage to sell niche products to a catered group that would otherwise be glossed over by larger names.
Re: Nothing lasts forever. (Score:2)
Still, will people be willing to stick around and/or buy products from this?
We are effectively entering an era of brand automation, where influencers/creators are having machines talk, act, and perform on their behalf. Would people be willing to engage with what is essentially an automated proxy?
Re: Nothing lasts forever. (Score:2)
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First of all, a youtuber is not a brand, it cannot survive on its own.
What? The one part of that sentence is irrelevant to the other, and it is also wrong. A youtuber is a brand, and nothing can survive on its own. Everything requires a support structure, we know of nothing which can live in a vacuum without some kind of protection.
You can't compare an individual on youtube or in the movies to a product like say a Lamp, a car, or any other items, so for that reason I don't see it as a "brand".
You can compare an individual on youtube to any number of media brands.
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First of all, a youtuber is not a brand, it cannot survive on its own.
You should tell that to the top Youtubers who are literally getting multi-million dollar deals based on their brand value.
is because the character is what people come to see
Some people are interested in content of the channel, and the character is irrelevant / replacable.
You can't compare an individual on youtube or in the movies to a product like say a Lamp, a car, or any other items, so for that reason I don't see it as a "brand".
Brands are not about physical things or individual products. Heck many of the most recognised brands in the world are actually service brands rather than tied to any products.
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Indeed. The only "influencers" I see survive are actually content creators that are some distance away from the mainstream and have fans that actually like what they create and like the person(s) that do it, i.e. they are "fans" as you point out. These people can probably go as long as they like as the fan-base ages with them. Obviously they will not get rich, but making a decent living is entirely possible. The mainstream stuff is just too simplistic, too shallow, too flashy and too easy to replace.
That sa
Does he own rights to his own image, etc? (Score:2)
That’s it guys (Score:5, Funny)
This could’ve been automated a long time ago
“Hit that like and subscribe button and don’t forget to click on that bell so you never have to miss any content! And now a word of our sponsor”
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Yep because that's why people watch Youtube videos /s
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How do you know that something has become way, way too annoying? Right. When there are blocker [mozilla.org] plugins [google.com] for it.
Eh, (Score:2)
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It's not like it's a hard act to follow.
Maybe we can get it to report the news? Can't be worse than the corrupt flim-flam shit we have now.... then again it's all about Input.
https://youtu.be/WnTKllDbu5o [youtu.be]
Youtube channel suicide (Score:2)
I doubt his viewership will accept being fooled. Just like if Picasso had paid someone to make a machine that draws paintings with Picasso's style: Picasso would have lost his patron rather quickly trying to sell them machine-made facsimiles.
If however the Youtube channel survives and thrives, it will prove that his viewers are fucking morons.
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If however the Youtube channel survives and thrives, it will prove that his viewers are fucking morons.
It will prove that his viewers don't care about how the content was created, so long as it's the content they're after.
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They'll be hanging around just for the interesting hallucinations.
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That depends entirely on how it's done. This? Yeah, probably. But there are other ways.
A couple channels I follow take vacations and either have other channels fill in for them, usually lesser known channels that get a boost out of it (and you get to see if someone you never heard about would be something you'd like to follow, and if done right, this could actually be a palate cleanser and something fresh for the channel rather than a boring plug) or they just flat out state that they need a break and that
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I doubt his viewership will accept being fooled.
Who said anything about being fooled? At no point did he say he was doing this in secret or that the AI was pretending to be him.
If however the Youtube channel survives and thrives, it will prove that his viewers are fucking morons.
So everything you ever watch you do so solely for the joy of hearing the specific voice or seeing the specific person? You've never been interested in story, or the content subject? I wouldn't go calling others fucking morons if that's the way you consume media. In other news several prominent youtube channels expanded to the point of introducing other people into their offerings
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Yep. (Score:2)
Those are a bit different... (Score:2)
Well so is electroboom, evblog, Sabine Hossenfelder, Veritassium and many more, but it's still just entertainment, and we're biased for liking them.
No one of the actually does anything for us, except some specific channels with real instructables or say learning to code, system administration etc, you could argue for that documentary channels are the most useful there is, still entertainment that isn't mind-numbingly stupid.
However - I remember when Medhi got really angry when he was so frustrated that back
Who? (Score:2)
Onion Headline? (Score:4, Funny)
Guy who plays video games for a living wants an AI to do his job for him.
already done (Score:2)
I replaced him with AI a long time ago. I watch him constantly on my old laptop, the one that stopped working 10 years ago.