Spotter’s new AI-driven “brainstorm partner” is getting creators 49% more views

Artificial intelligence is a contentious topic these days–and a trendy one, with every major tech company and former crypto/NFT brand jumping on what they see as the latest moneymaking bandwagon. We’ve written before about the issues creators face with AI, including the lack of control over whether their content is scraped for use in large language models, and we’ve also written about a small handful of companies who are trying to make AI work for creators, with their consent.

Joining that handful is Spotter, which today announced Spotter Studio, an AI-based tool that’s meant to serve as “a brainstorm partner, project planner, and research copilot,” the company says. Once a creator signs up for Spotter Studio, the program looks at their entire channel, and, based on that information, can do everything from cold-suggesting new video topics to drafting thumbnails.

Spotter, which was founded in 2019, used to focus on catalog licensing, where it would pay creators a lump sum for the rights to their old content. But, over the last couple of years, it noticed a changing tide in our industry: artificial intelligence wasn’t going away, and creators were simultaneously becoming more interested in and more leery of AI. It decided to shift its business model. Paul Bakaus, Spotter’s EVP of Product and Creator Tools, tells Tubefilter the company figured it could use AI to bolster creators’ workflows, and wanted to help them “get ahead” of the deluge of generative AI slop it knew would soon fill YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms.

Spotter began hiring executives from Adobe, Amazon, Google, Headspace, Linktree, and Spotify to help it build AI tools, and consulted consulted YouTubers like Colin & Samir about what creators really

wanted from AI. Its first AI tool, Title Exploder, rolled out in late 2023.

Spotter Studio (which wraps Title Exploder into its suite) was also born from creator input. MrBeast, Dude Perfect, Kinigra Deon, Rebecca Zamolo, Jordan Matter, Jay Alto, Hayden Hillier-Smith, and Colin & Samir all participated in the tool’s beta period.

And, Spotter says, these creators found that videos made with Spotter Studio got 49% more views in their first seven days than videos made without it. So far, videos made using Spotter Studio as part of the development process have collectively netted 844 million views.

“Spotter’s mission has always been to empower Creators and provide the resources and opportunities that enable them to thrive,” Aaron DeBevoise, CEO and Founder of Spotter, said in a statement. “As the industry evolves, so do we, continually adapting to meet the needs of Creators by working directly with them. What makes Spotter Studio so special is that it was not only designed for Creators, but with them.”

The tool starts broad. Creators begin with its Brainstorm function, where Spotter Studio generates video ideas based on their channel’s content. If the creator likes an idea, they can pin it for future use. If they like a suggestion’s core conceit but want to tweak something about the execution, they can ask the Studio to change that aspect. (Like, if a video idea requires winter gear but it’s summer, they can say, Change this video to being filmed on the beach.) They can revise multiple ideas over and over until they’ve narrowed it down to something they want to make.

Then Spotter Studio offers finishing flair like title suggestions and thumbnail drafts (which Bakaus says are not meant to serve as true thumbnail art; they’re purposefully kind of cartoony and lo-fi so creators still have to make their own ‘nails for the upload).

While AI is the core of Spotter Studio, the tool also offers a centralized place to plan, Dude Perfect’s Coby Cotton said. “Ideas that used to be scattered across phones, whiteboards, and sticky notes are now organized in one place, accessible to the entire DP team from ideation through post-production. Spotter Studio is our new home base,” he said.

Spotter Studio is being officially announced at VidSummit this week, but it’s available now for $49/month or $299/year (temporary discount) to creators in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia.