Everyone’s talking about MrBeast‘s AI tweet–the one where he laments OpenAI‘s introduction of the Sora app and wonders what will happen to him and fellow content creators “[w]hen AI videos are just as good as normal videos.”
He says we’re entering “scary times,” having apparently not predicted this is where things would end up. His history with AI is a mixed bag: He was involved in the beta for Spotter’s generation-heavy Studio tool, which scrapes participating creators’ entire channels, feeds them into a LLM, and then spits out new video ideas and thumbnails. He also teamed up with YouTube on the release of the platform’s autogenerated dub tracks, which involve machine learning and replace creators needing to hire human captioners to make their videos available in multiple languages.
Then, this past summer, MrBeast introduced his own thumbnail generation tool through his platform Viewstats. The tool garnered immediate and intense backlash, including criticism from other YouTubers like Jacksepticeye. MrBeast pulled it, saying he mistakenly “thought people were going to be pretty excited about it.”
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Meanwhile, his nonprofit Beast Philanthropy has invested in at least one AI project: light.ai, which claims it uses the tech to create “novel solutions for healthcare professionals and consumers that are safe, rapid and easy to use.” Beast Philanthropy’s partnership specifically helped bring “AI-powered life-saving [Strep A] tests to Africa,” according to light.ai.
A large portion of responses to MrBeast’s tweet have called him hypocritical, pointing to the AI thumbnail tool and accusing him of trying to hop on the AI bandwagon for personal gain. Some are pulling for the other side, saying Sora is just the next step into the inevitable future where humanity at large enjoys net benefits like somehow only having a three-day workweek while still convincing companies to pay us enough to live.
Like we said, lots of people are talking about MrBeast’s tweet. And it is important that the de facto biggest content creator on Earth is (finally) talking about the slop being pumped out by big tech companies chasing the latest shiny dollar sign.
But the real story here is that MrBeast isn’t the only creator expressing outright anxiety about generative AI usage in the wake of Sora’s chart-topping app debut.
Hank Green, Kurzgesagt–In a Nutshell, and more have posted videos this week sharing their worries about how YouTube and the internet at large will be affected by the rise of generated video that’s indistinguishable from reality.
“I’ve now scrolled SlopTok, and anybody who scrolls SlopTok for fun needs to reexamine how they interact with media,” Green said in a video called Give me a single reason why Sora2 should exist. “This isn’t an interesting place to spend time. There’s so much good content on the internet. […] This is pure fad, pure novelty. This is what they’re spending their money on? Their time on?”
He goes on to say he’s seen credible peers fall for Sora-made fake videos, like one where a cop’s bodycam supposedly shows him interrogating an elderly woman about her pet bear. This indistinguishability is exacerbated by OpenAI, he says, which puts tiny watermarks at the top or bottom of videos, where they can be easily cropped out. Without that watermark, there’s little to no way to tell a video is generated.
“The friction matters, Sam!” he bellows (meaning OpenAI CEO Sam Altman). “The extent to which these very powerful people feel no sense of responsibility to anything makes me feel like maybe they shouldn’t have this much power. They shouldn’t be in charge of the kind of thing that literally, by their own admission, destroys humanity. If you’re the kind of motherfucker who will create SlopTok, you are not the kind of motherfucker who should be in charge of OpenAI!”
Meanwhile, top educational channel Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell posted a video called AI Slop Is Destroying The Internet.
“It’s never been easier to make mediocre content, from the black hole of meaninglessness that is LinkedIn, low-effort short videos just engaging enough to hypnotize kids and fry their attention spans, to endless soullessly rewritten books on Amazon,” the video narrator says. “AI music is invading streaming services. Google AI is summarizing websites instead of sending traffic to them. On YouTube, new channels publish long-form content multiple times a week with AI-generated thumbnails, voices, and scripts.”
His ultimate conclusion: “We’re in the golden era of soulless slop.”
And with Sora becoming available to thousands or millions of people who can text prompt any video they want into existence, it’s about to get even worse.
YouTube has tried cracking down on what it calls “mass-produced” and “repetitive” content, but it and parent company Google are also going all-in on pumping AI for their own financial benefit, so it’s not clear where the line on that crackdown is drawn. Either way, regardless of efforts, YouTube is still teeming with AI channels, especially on Shorts–and the watch time those channels rack up (all in the name of making a quick buck) is taking viewership from human creators.
Everything sounds dire, we know. But Sora’s existence doesn’t mean the end of digital video has dawned. Our ever-expanding corner of the world is not going to collapse. Honest, passionate creators have weathered waves of grifters since the birth of this industry, and should know that audiences who truly care about quality will find and follow them.
It’s tough right now–but creators are smart and innovative and, most importantly, human. They’ll come out on top.
