Is AI going to destroy YouTube?

0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.

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1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. Will artificial intelligence destroy YouTube? That's the first question we answer today on the show. We're also going to be discussing this idea of the lean creator startup, then we're going to be talking about if you can actually upload less to grow more. We also play AI generated versions of our voice and we're curious to know if you guys can figure out which ones are real and which ones are AI. Welcome to another episode of Creator Support, the show where we answer your questions about the business of being a creator.

1:48If you make it to the deep end, let us know. Okay, a lot of interesting developments in our office this week. We have a basketball hoop upstairs. We do a mini, a very mini, mini basketball hoop, which has been really fun to play with. But it's also been chaotic. Yeah, it's been chaotic because it's right in the editing area, which congregates everyone. The ball is landing on computers. Yes. Hitting people in the face, knocking over coffees. Sure. It's destructive. But very fun. Yes. Part of the chaos of that area has also been some of our recent discoveries of artificial intelligence. That's true.

2:22True. We've had some strange experiences this week. Really strange experiences. And, you know, we get a lot of questions about AI. How are creators going to use AI? A lot of people are making videos about how creators are going to use AI. What's been really strange is how integrated it naturally is into our workflow. And I want to bring up this question. This comes from the Leah and Blair slog on YouTube. It's actually not a question. It's a comment, but I want us to react to it. AI is about to destroy YouTube. First, First, do you believe the statement, AI is about to destroy YouTube? I don't believe that statement.

2:56I think AI will be a tool that, as we just said, sort of starts to integrate into people's workflow, into videos, and it's barely noticeable. I'll give you an example. Okay. Our first main channel upload of the year, the interview with Austin Kleon. Yeah. The title for that video two days before was solving the, no, the solution to plagiarism on YouTube. and then Chris ran it through ChatGPT and it came up with the title The Copy and Paste Culture of YouTube and he sent that to us and at first I was sad I felt strange that the best title I could come up with was The Solution to Plagiarism on YouTube and that in an instant there was this title from ChatGPT that was simpler that didn't use the word plagiarism which can be a difficult word to read and latch onto if you're scrolling YouTube.

3:51All of a sudden, chat GPT. Yeah. Here it is. This is better. And then I realized you and I still had to choose the title that was the best and make adjustments. There were 10 options for us. Because the input was Chris put in the title and said, give me more intriguing titles based on this title. Yep. And it gave us 20. And we all agreed that that one was the most interesting. It stuck out. Um, but it also like the, the thing that you have to recognize across all of this, everything that's happening in AI currently present day is it's based on human inputs. So we made a video, we needed a title.

4:30We asked AI based on something that we had done to support us and give us more ideas. Um, so it's still based on our inputs. And then you're right. We're curating and selecting what matters after this. Our preference, our opinion, our taste matters once we see the options that AI gives us. And I think even in the... But what I want to say is that's an example of that video came out. It has that title. No one watching until now knew that that title was generated by AI. Yep. Right? So that's just seeping into, you know, our collection of videos. People are watching it and they don't even know where AI played a role or where it didn't.

5:15We were playing around with Adobe Firefly in the office as well, which is the AI tool that Adobe has released that's kind of like Photoshop with AI. Very strange that you can go text to image. That's such a strange thing that you can now type in what you want. Hey, I want a background that's green grass and blue sky. Now think about creating thumbnails. There's definitely people working on thumbnails like that. So for example, you can also change text and have text that's interestingly designed. Yeah. For example, let's say for the sake of this episode, the words creator support him in the show.

5:52Come up with a description and we'll put it on screen for those who are watching on YouTube. How about made of donuts? So. There it is. There it is. If you're watching on YouTube, you just saw it. Yeah. I think the concept of like destroying YouTube, right? What does that mean? I think there's probably a world where artificial intelligence can understand how to make extremely engaging videos like listicles, right? Like top three things like it can probably figure out how to make those list style videos that don't require a human touch. That might become more prevalent over the next couple of years.

6:30There was a YouTube channel when we first started out called Passion for Profession. Do you remember this? Yeah. A fitness channel that had millions. I mean, each video had 80 million views and it was an animation with a, I think, AI generated voice instructing the workouts. And I remember discovering it and you and I both would use it for workouts. You just turn it on and it would instruct you. So I think that will happen. There will be stuff that doesn't require. But then the slingshot will also happen of the other side is I crave the human taste, human taste, human perspective, stuff that makes it impossible for someone to replace.

7:12Jay Alto tweeted this morning. He said, if AI can replace your videos, AI isn't the problem. And I thought that was a really interesting tweet. Kind of a bar. Yeah, it's a good bar, Jay. Nice. I like that. Cool. Now, where I do think we're going to see AI infiltrate a little bit more is probably in the audio space. Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's what we've been playing around with in the office, and we'll play some samples. But a headline that I saw that was really interesting that plays into this is Quackity, the streamer, said that or announced that there will be the first ever multi-language Minecraft stream.

7:50where in real time you can watch and it will dub the voices and you can like, or I don't know if it'll dub, but you can watch in any language that you want in real time. In real time. In real time. So they're like streaming. Yeah. And you can choose a language that in real time it will be translated. Yes. That's amazing. That's crazy. Because you think about, it was such a revolution last year that creators were dubbing their content. Such a revolution. But imagine if that happens live. Yeah. Someone could be watching a live stream. And it's happening. And everyone anywhere in the world can watch live in their own language.

8:25So when we're talking about audio, what's been happening here in our office is we've been playing around with Descript, which is a tool. And we gave our consent to Descript. We loaded in our voices, gave our consent that Descript could create AI versions of our voices. Now we have four files here in front of me and we don't know where the AI is, but one of these for each of us has a line of AI generated voice. So let's listen to these. Let's see if we can figure it out. Let's also see if all of you guys can figure it out. Okay. So this is the first one from me. Now, no matter how you're generating your ideas before you start to make them, there is one thing left to do.

9:07You are going to filter them through your value prop. Okay. That's me, number one. Here's Samir, number two. We call these types of creators professional enthusiasts. We're reacting to creators that are popular, trends that are popular. We're looking at an industry and actually making videos reacting to it. So one is real and one is AI? There's a line of AI in one of those. Could you pick out the line of AI? I can because I know my intonation, but can you? No. I'll play one again. Now, no matter how you're generating your ideas, before you start to make them, there is one thing left to do. You are going to filter them.

9:43There is one thing left to do. But I mean, you didn't catch it the first time around. Yeah. My intonation is a little off there, but pretty convincing. Let's listen to you. I think you'll be able to know you better. I haven't listened to these yet. Your entire business comes down to the value that you're going to provide to that specific group of people. And it's not just about the business. It's truly about sustainability. okay okay if there's a i in that i have no idea it's pretty amazing all right here's number two but if you're not passionate about what you make the success you find will be hard to keep you can't do that for a long period of time without being lost from my experience okay the middle of that i think is yeah hard to keep hard to keep hard to keep but i mean so unbelievably close right and and we know what we said and what we didn't say but i'm curious for everyone who was listening and watching, like, was it that obvious to you?

10:39Because one of the most interesting things that we've heard about AI is people regularly say that this is the worst that it will be. Yeah. Everything you experience, everything you see, everything you listen to is the worst version of it that you will ever experience. So this is going to get, like, that is text. Like Bryce, who's editing here was typing in text and it was creating our voice. to help build out a video. Yeah, that's crazy. Like, I mean, there's definitely a future in two years where you can just use chat GPT to say, imagine a conversation between Colin and Samir. It'll give us the transcript.

11:16And then you load that into another software and say, give me their voices having this conversation. I think it's going to be really, really hard to tell in audio. I also think what this unlocks from just like a business perspective is probably audio books is one of the first places, right? Hey, let me give you consent. I don't have to go read my audio book now. Can you just put my book through this thing and it'll spit out an audio book? I don't have to go do it. Or in movies where they have to book actors for additional days to do voiceover, those are really expensive days. So they can just say, hey, can I actually just license the rights to your voice in case we need to do ADR?

11:53I'll just punch it in. I think it will open up obviously a lot of creative opportunities, but there is something worrisome, obviously, about knowing what's real and what's not. Like we're going to have to have some sort of layer of verification for audio, for text, for video. And how do you even do that? Because the only way that I can possibly prove that what I'm taking in is from another human is if they are standing in front of me and I can confirm that this is a human talking to me right now because the internet, how can we verify? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how it's going to happen, but the thing that's really interesting is how much of us as creators is out there.

12:36You know, like our voice, you and I have been doing this podcast since 2018. We gave consent to Descript to recreate our voice, but you don't have to. Yeah. Yeah. Someone else could just do it. You can do that anywhere. Yeah. And there's a lot of our face. There's so much data about us as creators or us as individuals through these social platforms that that's, that's what's interesting is you start to see like on youtube some of these the bots and like the streams that started to come up across youtube of this happened to linus um like two weeks ago where you know the tesla scam where it's like the the channel gets taken over and there's like an elon musk live stream and it's like fake and it's a deep fake of elon it's really weird but that type of stuff can happen now way more frequently where it's like yeah you just take someone's voice and they're saying something and you take someone's yeah so it's uh it's a very odd thing i don't know how it's going to impact youtube i think there's you know the the one side which is we are not we don't if someone asked me like are you really into ai right now i'd be like not really but then when i zoom out i'm like every week almost every day i'm engaging with ai yeah every day it's you don't even notice that it's a part of our workflow and then on the other side there's the terrifying like did you see um will Smith eating spaghetti.

13:50Yeah. Yeah. Text to video is bizarre. Text to video is bizarre. I think when it comes to how it's going to affect YouTube, I don't think it's going to destroy YouTube. I think it's going to integrate with YouTube in ways that are pretty seamless. And I think it's going to turn YouTube into an even more global platform. If you remember when Jimmy released his Squid Game video, we made a video about Squid Game at that time. And the reason that we said Squid Game was so popular was because it was released, dubbed into so many languages at once. It was kind of the first of its kind. And what's coming is the ability for every creator to have their videos dubbed into any language.

14:29Because similar to what we just did with Descript, you load in your voice, you give consent, and all of a sudden you could listen to our podcast in multiple languages. Yeah. Text to video is strange because it might disrupt the like how to search on the internet, how to tie a tie, you know, could be created through AI, how to cut a pineapple like that. That world of search on YouTube might get completely disrupted. The how to, the instructional video. But again, it's the only way to safeguard yourself against this as a creator is a just like learn about it, learn how to use it. But B, also like think about things that only you can do.

15:10Like what are the human moments? And that comes, you know, all the way around to just don't just create based on algorithmic feedback. There has to be a human touch point here. And I want to talk about a tweet I saw. Mr. Beast, he tweeted a retention graph from one of his videos that has over 50 million views. And one of the craziest things is 76 % of viewers are still watching around the 32nd mark, which is above typical. And what's incredible about this graph is like the way he's able to hold everyone's attention through this video. Like, that's amazing. And that has been the craft of this wave of YouTube.

15:48but the first thing I thought about when I saw this tweet was 70 % of people are there after about a minute how strange would it be if you were in a movie theater and 30 % of people just walked out after like a minute of watching something or whatever the equivalent is right after like 20 % of the video they think about the lengths you would have to go to yeah offend 30 % of the people so much yeah or just engage them yeah that they will get up and leave and I just thought about the mediums of storytelling and like when you purchase a ticket to go to a movie how different that is from the amount of choice you have on the internet and i think that um what will continue to get further and further apart especially with the addition of ai is internet content versus like real life experiences like people might end up buying tickets and going to plays and buying tickets and going to the movies now because internet content might become so mathematical, you know, and with the, with the layering on top of AI, it might become almost indistinguishable and the, and the lack of human touch point will make you crave more.

16:58I think that's a good thing for art. It's a good thing for art. Performance. For sure. I've been thinking a lot lately about Noel Miller and how he's been on tour, his comedy tour. He's selling out huge venues. Totally. All over the country. It's super exciting to me that he can put out so much work online, but be able to have that in-person experience because it's hard to distinguish as a creator. Yeah, it's really hard. What does it mean to get, you know, millions of views? But to be there in person is such a different thing. I was talking to you this morning, you know, the impact of scrolling TikTok or Instagram and seeing someone wearing our press publish hat.

17:33Yeah. that I don't know is so amazing and so impactful. But, you know, 30 million views on our last short on the main channel. I don't know what to do with that. What does that even mean? Right. You know? Right, right, right. Yeah. Also, these hats are cool. I'm very proud of this hat. Yeah. It's a great hat. It's a great hat. It's a good hat. It's a good hat. Is it a great hat or a good hat? It's a wonderful hat. Okay. Let's get to our next question. This comes from Caroline Winkler from the subreddit. It's titled, Could Scarcity Be an Undervalued Asset?

18:31Sometimes I wonder if scarcity is actually kind of an undervalued asset, like letting your audience miss you a little bit. So I guess logistically, do you see a future where breaks are more built into the creator career? I'd really like to hear how you guys schedule taking time off for yourselves and your companies. If you do, I'm I would love to hear. OK, Caroline, fantastic question. And also one of the best descriptions of YouTube creators I've ever heard, burnt out and greedy. I just thought that was a, that's a really funny pairing of, you know, two words. Caroline has a YouTube channel with over 400 ,000 subscribers, makes comedy content as well as interior design.

19:16Very cool, but, but really great question from Caroline. Every creator is going to have a different relationship with their audience, right? I do think there's something to going away. you know I think about Severance which is a show that I really really enjoy hasn't been on the air in such a long time I can't wait for it to come back and you would still identify as a fan of Severance absolutely yeah even though it hasn't been on the air in I don't know a year yeah it's the same thing with musicians like you know I think what we forget is we we are creating libraries of work you know Frank Ocean someone we brought up before we we set a term the Frank Ocean effect where he like puts out work and then leaves and doesn't come back for years and years and years.

19:57And you recognize like, there's still fans of Frank Ocean, even though he's not putting out work. One of my favorite moments from Aziz, I'm sorry, his comedy special is he brings up a moment where he sees Frank Ocean at a party and he's like, Frank, how do you do it? And Frank's like, oh yeah, you just, you gotta be okay making less money. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think understanding the term enough is something that we just don't do as creators very often. You and I talk about this a lot, but like just taking out a pen and pad and being like, what's enough? What's enough money? What's enough viewership?

20:32How much do I actually need of this stuff? You know, like I think Eric said it to us when we interviewed him. You're only capped by your willingness to work right now. We don't know the bounds of the internet. We don't know. No one has seen like, oh, that's the cap. I can't make any more money on YouTube than that. You know, it's an ever expanding environment where every time you upload, you create more opportunity. You, you do another brand deal. You make more AdSense. You add to the library, it lifts the whole library. Someone reaches out to you, you collaborate. And I do think we're, we're in a space where scarcity is undervalued.

21:10Like I really do agree with her on that, that term. I think scarcity creates like a premium brand, like being like, Like think about fashion brands, which by the way, she called us two polarizing figures in the world of fashion. Appreciate that. But you think about fashion brands like Supreme. Supreme became very valuable because it was so scarce. Like they released products that you couldn't get. That made it premium. That made the price go up. So the less available you are as an artist, if you're really good, you can become more premium. Yeah. I would say if your business is advertising based though, it implies that you're in a position where you can take time off and actually be scarce or take time off and then drive your rates up because now your assumption is that there will be less content, but maybe it'll be higher viewership and you can charge higher rates.

22:02There's a dynamic there. And I think it's a risk that there's always that risk. You step away, you come back and people are like. Yeah, totally. And it's not maybe about people missing you. Yeah. It's just about maybe it wasn't your best work when you came back. Maybe the algorithm slightly changed. People were focused on other things and just happened not to find your work again. I don't know. The only way to safeguard around that is to keep your expenses and your overhead so low that you can pivot. That's the only way. Because if you want to be scarce and want to not play into that, then typically what happens with creators is as they start growing, and I'll speak from experience, as you start growing and more brand deals start coming in and more opportunities start coming in, you immediately build more expenses.

22:48You hire more people, you rent a bigger studio. And then that creates a situation where you can't say no anymore. You know, you can't say I'm not going to upload anymore because now you've created a situation where you have to meet those expenses. And I think as artists and as creators, we always want to plan for not knowing at all who we're going to be in six months. And I think that's something that's really important of being like If you want to play in that world of scarcity and and thinking about breaks and thinking about You know, just plan ahead and be like in six months. I could not be into this.

23:20That is a possibility So how do I plan for that? How do I plan for that in six months? I'm going to want to take two months off You know, and if you look at that then again, it all comes back to that first exercise of like what's enough What's enough money? What's enough videos? What's enough viewership? Coming up with that would be really helpful But I think from a consumer perspective, I think we all have to recognize that artists and creatives and creative work that's scarce still has loyal, like they still have loyal fan bases, whether that's TV shows, musicians, like, you know, Blink-182 plays in two weeks.

23:56I'd probably try and go buy a ticket to that. I mean, I'm going to postal service and death cab. Same. Right. So, and like, I haven't seen, I haven't seen them. I'm not really that big of a fan of their new work, but I'm really excited to, I'll buy the ticket and go see them because the relationship I have with the work that they did, because it was really meaningful work. But music isn't advertising based. No, it's not. It's not in that cycle of needing to reach the maximum amount or the right amount of people so that another brand can make money off of that interaction. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

24:28It's probably shifting the business model too, if you're going to be scarce. To more like direct with your community. Yeah. It's not easy. it's not easy to do. I'm not going to say that being scarce is, is, um, an easy thing to do, but I will say that I think I agree with Caroline that it's undervalued, that I think that creators can look around and be like, is scarcity something that, you know, would be a value here. I kind of like the, the perspective that Ludwig gave us when he was on the show and he talked about how, when people look back at your year as a creator, they don't remember the regular uploads.

25:01they remember the things that you eventized. So like his chess boxing event. He's been doing these types of big events. It's like core to who he is as a creator. And that's, in a way, those events are what are scarce. Within the rest of his content that's maybe easier to make. You know, showing up on the yard or mogul mail. Like he has these engines, as we'll call them, things that he's able to pump out frequently. And then he, similarly to an album, in the background is working on something bigger that he can eventize. That's cool. Think about like, what are you dropping? Yeah. What are you dropping?

25:36Yeah, that's cool. I like that. Well, Caroline, I hope that was helpful. And I think to all creators who are thinking about the same thing, but I think even just naming that, like we're burnt out and greedy, breaks are incredibly important. Like I, I, I can say that it's really, really hard when you are experiencing momentum and compound interest as a creator. Like when for the first time it's working. When all the pieces are coming together, the viewership is getting up, the opportunities are going. Like it feels like, oh my God, this is all happening. Very hard to pump the brakes in that moment.

26:11But, you know, we just uploaded our first video. We took a four month break on the main channel. On the main channel. Yes. The main channel. Was it really a break? I think that's something interesting to talk about. Sure. A four month break from uploading a long form video to the main channel. Can you read the comment that was left on the video? Yeah. yesterday. This was a comment on the video that we posted. This comes from Money Talk with Tristan Thomas. Just poking the bear and continuing the conversation of posting frequencies from the pod, I feel like this video didn't take three months to make.

26:43Was it that you guys were working on something else and you decided that this was a format that could be thrown out faster than other ongoing projects? Or did you guys just wait until you had a topic you were passionate about? I'd love some insight on behind the scenes decision making that made this the first video you guys put out in three months. Maybe discuss it on the pod. Here we are, Money Talk with Tristan Thomas, discussing it on the pod. That was something that I expected to happen, that people would assume the reason we haven't been uploading, especially coming off of one of our last videos of the year being a 40-minute documentary-style video, that some people would be like, oh, okay.