For years, Jordi Van Den Bussche has expressed his desire to replace himself with a virtual creator, or VTuber. At the start of August, the Dutch gamer known as Kwebbelkop took a big step toward that goal. He premiered a new character for his 15 million YouTube subscribers: An AI-driven version of himself.
“The Digital Kwebbelkop,” as the new character is known, was developed at Van Den Bussche’s company, JVDBStudios. The gamer and his team have revealed several new tools: They are training VTubers to mimic specific creators (Kwebbelkop, in this case) and using AI technology to streamline the video production process. The result, at least in the first Digital Kwebbelkop video, is a character who looks like Van Den Bussche, sounds like him, and plays Minecraft like him.
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Van Den Bussche took to X to discuss his plans for his digital doppelganger. For now, four Digital Kwebbelkop videos will go live each week, and the team behind them “will 100% focus on improving the AI every single day.”
This is not Van Den Bussche’s first experiment in the world of virtual characters. He has become one of the YouTube community’s foremost proponents of VTuber replacements, who he sees as solutions to the burnout that addles many creators.
In an August 2022 interview with Tubefilter, Van Den Bussche laid out the benefits of his current approach to content creation. VTubers never tire and never need to retire. By replacing themselves with digital successors, creators can correct mistakes they may have made earlier in their careers. “It’s a second chance,” van den Bussche said at the time, “but a more modern version of it.”
To test his theories, he launched a VTuber called Bloo. The blue-haired character now receives 10 million views per month, according to JVDBStudios.
Bloo’s success is encouraging, but until his channel gets bigger than Kwebbelkop, Van Den Bussche will continue to pay attention to his primary channel. He shows his real-life face every once in a while (like when he announced a new video game called Helskate), but The Digital Kwebbelkop will begin to host the gaming videos that were once led by Van Den Bussche.
