YouTube's AI updates, our favorite videos of 2023, and what to do if your audience is disappearing

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.

0:38Today, we're diving into the remarkable story of Colin Rosenblum. Wow. Did you pay it to say that? That's crazy. That's very kind. It's crazy, but it's my favorite way to learn about a subject matter. I'm learning about so much more now that I can turn this research into like a seven minute podcast that I can listen to just when I'm walking. Did you tell it that I worked at the front desk of a hotel? Dude, the prompt is just, make me a podcast about Colin from Colin and Samir. That's it. I may be biased, but I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm hooked. So if you guys haven't checked out Copilot, check it out.

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. What's up podcast listeners. Welcome to this episode of Creator Support. On today's episode, we're talking about YouTube's latest AI announcements and what they mean for creators. We also talk about what you should do if your viewership starts to decline and you don't know why. And we recap some of our favorite videos of the year. All right, if you make it to the deep end, let us know. We just hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream and a card again.

1:50A dream? Oh, oh, oh, oh. I just, once I said that, I was like, wait a second, those are song lyrics. so hopped off the plane at lax yeah we're talking miley cyrus yeah yeah of course okay i got nervous for a second i didn't know that song because i knew i knew it but like wow man thank god you haven't been on track star i was just thinking that yeah track star is jack coins uh show in new york where he asks you to name the artist and you win five bucks um i went on the show i thought i did pretty well but i don't even know if those are the lyrics let's just get into the show huh Okay. So yeah, we got off the plane.

2:28We just got off the plane. It's later at night. We've come to the studio and it's been a bit of a whirlwind. We were in San Francisco at APEC. The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference, I think, are the words in there. Yeah. We had a really cool experience. We got to go to APEC in San Francisco and speak with YouTube. We got to do a panel with Neil Mohan, the CEO of YouTube. We also got to speak about our journey and talk about the potential for economic impact that content creators can have. And I thought it was a really cool experience to, like, it was a pretty surreal experience to tell our story to that room of people, to like government officials and people who worked all over the world and in government and recognizing that as we were telling the story, I was like, wow, you know what?

3:25Like this is, this is really crazy. We really did just have this idea, upload videos to this platform and then actually create jobs for ourselves as well as our team members. Like it was a very surreal experience to be telling that story in that room and recognize like 12, 12 years ago when we uploaded a video, it's like, this didn't have to work. It's pretty amazing that it worked. Yeah, it was a cool opportunity to explain to people who don't necessarily know fully what the creator economy is, to explain to them what it is and the type of economic impact that it can have on people in their countries.

4:02And we really just tried to kind of demystify it and try and get people not necessarily to see all of us creators as content creators, but more as like founders, entrepreneurs, people building businesses. I think that's something that they can kind of latch on to. It just so happens that media and creating video is a huge part of what we all do. Yeah. And it felt like at the conference in general, AI was a big subject matter. I think that like in 2023, when we look back, AI is the topic of this year. It's been a massive leap this year from, you know, early in January, we were like, oh, chat GPT.

4:43That's pretty cool. Yeah, this is interesting. It's interesting. You can ask it like it's a chatbot. It'll talk back to you. You can ask some questions and it'll say something back. And then you go all of a sudden and here we are, you know, using AI in more ways than we could have imagined and seeing the use of AI in more ways than we could have imagined. So the questions, there was something that Neil said that I really enjoyed when we were talking to him on the panel. He talked about like whatever country you're in or whatever platform you're on, like you obey the rules of the road. And I actually thought that was a really good framework to just suggest like it's now on the platforms and the countries as well to recognize like what are the rules of the road?

5:23Like how do you play by the rules on these platforms specifically when it comes to AI and AI-generated content. And so this week, YouTube has actually made two announcements when it comes to AI. And I think we should talk about those before we get into questions. Sure. So yeah, to that point of rules of the road, the idea there was that, you know, if something is against YouTube's terms of service, if it's a deepfake that's meant to deceive and do harm in some sort of way, whether it's a deepfake or not, it's against YouTube's terms Meaning whether it's made by AI or not. Yeah, whether it's made by AI or not.

5:58Yeah. You know, the same rules of the road apply. And it's up to, you know, YouTube to figure out what the solution is. And they came forward and started to announce some solutions. The first of which is that they're requiring creators to label realistic AI-generated content if it's a part of their video. So really putting the responsibility on behalf of the creators to make sure we declare if something is AI generated. So not so dissimilar from like how it says paid programming, right? Like that was something that came about a couple years ago where if you're doing a brand deal, they ask you to self-identify it and say, yes, there is paid promotion in this episode.

6:45And then a box comes up so that the audience knows that this episode contains paid promotion. essentially this will look almost identical to that. It's that, you know, that kind of like black opaque box. And it says, it says altered or synthetic content. Yeah. And this is something that, you know, I spoke to Kwebelkop about a month ago and he's a creator who's, you know, completely transitioned on his channel from, you know, having himself in the videos to now it's a completely AI generated, avatar version of himself that looks pretty photorealistic. The scripts are AI generated. It's pretty fascinating.

7:27And when I was speaking to him, he was telling me, look, the least that platforms can do is offer this type of solution as a start, because it is very difficult right now. There's not a ton of technology that allows us to identify if something's been AI generated. That's something that I believe in the announcement YouTube put out that they are investing in, or I read it in a Verge article that they're investing in it. And a lot of people are investing in tools to help identify if something has been generated with AI. But if we don't have that yet, we need to at least start with, you know, asking slash requiring creators to do it themselves.

8:07Yeah, it just, it establishes one of the rules of the road, right? It's like, here, here's now a new rule. And if you break the rule, then, you know, there, there could be consequences for that. The content could be taken down. It could be demonetized. Now, they did make a note that, you know, there will be exceptions in terms of satire and parody. So what's the so you're saying parody and satire in AI generated content. So let's say something we talked about with Kevin Alaka when it was president's play Minecraft. Remember that? Yeah. Where you have Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Barack Obama's voices playing Minecraft and joking around with each other.

8:48it's obviously satire is that an example of like that's that's as long as it's labeled that's fine yeah i believe the the rules of the road apply there now i know that as a creator you can protect yourself by filling out a form and requesting a takedown if there is a deep fake oh interesting okay so now we talk about from the creator side of like you know okay making a funny video with with um you know like president's play with with other voices in it but now we think about it from our side something that we've experienced is deep fakes of our voices on youtube so now for us we file a claim is that what you're saying yeah even if someone labels it as ai or photo or sorry synthetic media if it's us and we don't like it then we need to file a manual claim i believe so yes okay again this is all very new so uh just know that we are reading this in real time and learning about it in real time.

9:47This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two-factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40 % your first year. Visit lifelock.com slash podcast for 40 % off. Terms apply. So from what I understand, when it comes to music, the rules are a lot more strict. And there won't be exceptions for things like parody and satire.

10:26Yeah. When there's AI-generated music that mimics someone else's voice. Yeah. In The Verge, it says, I read it prior, there'd be no exceptions for things like parody and satire when it comes to AI-generated music content from YouTube's partners that mimics an artist's unique singing or rapping voice. Meaning Frank Sinatra singing The Killer's Mr. Brightside is likely an uphill battle if a universal music group decides they don't like it. Have you heard that one? Yeah, of course. Yeah, all those are like, they're so fun to listen to, but it's interesting how the labels will treat them. And I think there's probably no exceptions there because music is a very, to me, the music business right now, it's a very scary place from the quality of AI-generated music that we've heard over the past year.

11:21It feels like it's probably some of the best quality creative. Like we've seen people make really good stuff on MidJourney. Like the photos have been really great. I haven't really seen great AI-generated video yet. I've seen good deep fakes like we did with the Hey Jen changing languages, but music has been some of the most convincing. Yeah, definitely. And I think YouTube is being pretty strict about music because music is incredibly valuable to YouTube, let alone in its competition with TikTok. I've got to be down because I want it all. I started off with a kiss. How did it end up like this?

12:08I mean, that's just good fun, though. Yeah. You know? Yeah. That's just good fun. That's Frank Sinatra singing The Killers. There you go. I mean, it's going to be fascinating to see how this impacts the platform, but you're right. Music is incredibly important to YouTube. I don't know the stats on this. They're probably out there, but the amount of music that's listened to on YouTube, and And as we know, some of the biggest videos on the platform are music videos. And, you know, my dad uses YouTube primarily to listen to music. So music is a very important piece of the puzzle for the platform.

12:46But that also leads us to the second AI announcement of the week, which is DreamTrack. Okay, so I watched a demo of DreamTrack. before it was announced. And my mind was blown. So this is an experiment in YouTube shorts, where creators can generate music using AI and using the voices of right now seven artists, Charlie Puth, Charlie XCX. What? Did I say that wrong? Say it one more time. charlie xcx okay did i say that right i mean listen we'll let the community decide okay demi lovato john legend sia t-pain and troy sivan now these are these are huge artists by the way this is not like this is this is pretty wild to me so here's how it works you type in an idea and or or a prompt like a song about cleaning my house and then you select the artist's voice and you will get a 30 second original song i heard one for charlie pooth and it was incredibly convincing whoa and i just it was um i immediately it was so bizarre because it sounded exactly like charlie pooth but it was about like cleaning up your room and i had like it had just been generated in front of my eyes right and i started to think about okay clearly for these seven artists they're not afraid of giving up the sound of their voice here they're probably interested in like the future of what this will all mean you have to be obviously there's a monetary component to being the first of these seven artists who are huge so they got paid but i'm like wow what's going to be the impact if this rolls out on a major scale and charlie pooth and all these different artists john legend t-pain their likeness their voice is incredibly available like does their brand become saturated do they care that like oh here's a here's a uh you know demi lovato song about mowing the lawn and it's gone incredibly viral and like she's just like well yeah look at that yeah you know what if she feels like that's not a part of her brand for me when i look at the seven artists the one that sticks out is t-pain to me that's like that makes sense that's like i feel like t-pain's at like the shack era of his career where he could like he could just expand his brand to whatever you know like he's not on the come up okay but t-pain is is a true artist have you watched his npr tiny desk concert yeah t-pain's amazing but T-Pain, the brand I'm saying is like Shaq.

15:47Do you know what I'm saying? Would you say that to T-Pain if he was sitting at the table right now? Is he about to walk in? Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome T-Pain. But like Troye Sivan is, is, is on the come up right now. Um, not that Troye Sivan has not been around for a long time. Um, John Legend is like an incredibly established artist. Like this is, this is a, a very interesting group. How many times, how many times have we seen John Legend just in the wild? Yeah, just, I don't know what it is about John Legend and sean mendez but we end up in rooms with them like and i'm not even saying it as like that we're with them it's just we are somehow yeah in the same room these aren't name drops no these aren't name drops it's like we're at a restaurant and john legend is at the table five tables down i'm not saying like oh i hung out with my friend john and then sean showed up and you're like oh what but that that has happened once which is crazy so no yeah but we don't know them really no no yeah yeah Yeah.

16:39Okay. All right. So this DreamTrack thing is really fascinating. I'm not 100 % sure exactly how it's going to work, but from my understanding, it'll work somewhat similar to shorts monetization where there's a portion of it that's split with the label and the musician and then a portion of it that creators get. I'm not 100 % sure how that's going to work, but essentially like we're going to be able to make custom songs in our shorts and then be able to monetize them in the shorts feed. That is unbelievably significant in the world of generative AI and also in the world of artist name, image, and likeness licensing.

17:22This reminds me a lot of when Napster came on the scene. That's right, yeah. And there were some artists who were really obviously against it. So streaming music for free over the internet. And then eventually the music industry found a way to control it, to monetize it. And I think the music industry had to learn that lesson the hardest about keeping up with technology when it comes to how it's going to change the industry. And it seems like in this instance, this is another, they see this as a huge leap forward that could drastically change the music industry in ways we never even imagined. and they're taking a leap of faith of like let's be first let's control it ourselves i mean look at this youtube's putting really strict rules around other people using someone else's voice no parody no satire no one else can do it but let's on behalf like working with the music industry let's control it so that it doesn't get out of hand yeah right yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

18:32I think, you know, we're in the era of you kind of, you have to, you have to establish the frameworks and the rules and then you, yeah, you kind of like someone is going to roll this out. Like you'd have to imagine that TikTok is working on it as well, right? And I say control it, not with malintent. I say control it like on behalf of protecting the artists too. Yeah. Right. Because if you don't protect the artists, if you don't have systems in place and everyone's copying their voice and monetizing their their yeah sound then that's a that's a bad future right for the music industry and for artists so just just to recap to give you a high level you know number one um ai generated content is going to have to be labeled moving forward so uh self-labeled by the creator and then for us if if someone's using our name image and likeness without our permission and we want to take it down we can file a claim to get it taken down on YouTube.

19:30And then when you go over to the DreamTrack announcement, what we just talked about, that is creators like ourselves or whoever gets access to this tool being able to create custom tracks in shorts with specific artists' voice. It's a really interesting time in AI. Kwebblekop, who again, you spoke about and you spoke to, tweeted this. He said, having to disclose on YouTube that you used AI to create content is great. It helps the space become more mature and in the future will be a label of safety and quality. It's really interesting though, because, you know, there's, I wonder what the line is for what you have to disclose when it comes to AI, because let's say we've seen a lot of this of creators who, you know, have a background and they extend the background with generative fill.

20:20And like, that's not the real room but they extended the background yeah is that do we like is that altered by ai and synthetic content or what about scripts or what about scripts chad hurley founder of youtube uh there was just an announcement that he has a new company now that helps will help creators build and write scripts for their videos so if you have a script if it's actually you saying the words but the script is fully ai generated do you have to disclose that and how how would anyone how would anyone know that's the issue is if you don't self-disclose and it becomes more and more realistic over the next year how how does anyone know yeah i think it's just the first step in yeah what you know people in the industry believe the future could look like you know verification on videos that this is real i think people know that that's what's needed and now this is a first step obviously the the evolution of this has to be towards having technology that identifies what was created with ai how you know i mean i listen i don't i literally don't know the answer to that question it feels overwhelming uh probably because we are very far away from that uh side of of creation but uh big steps in in the ai story this week.

21:41And I imagine as we get into 2024, it will just continue to be at the forefront of a lot of the conversations we're having around media distribution, media creation. Just to note, TikTok did add a label for AI-generated content and said that users need to disclose when content is meant to look realistic and was made by AI. And Meta has said that all political advertisers need to disclose the use of AI in ads. Obviously, they want to get ahead of the election next year. I think everybody needs to get ahead of the election and put some frameworks and some rules in place and start testing them so that as, you know, election time comes next year in the US, you're not in a situation where there's a ton of misinformation going around, a ton of deep fakes, a ton of AI generated content.

22:24So yeah, I mean, look, if you guys have thoughts on this, please let us know. We do read a lot of your comments, whether they're in discord or twitter or even on reddit which i'm gonna read one right now from you slash getting negative on reddit said in regards to criticism in video comments in the creator support episode released today so this is uh no i think two weeks ago colin and samir touched on the best practice for haters and criticism in your comment section i wanted to share some views on the subject based on the book the mission of art by alex gray in this book he states once a piece of art is finished and hung up on a wall for people to view, it's no longer yours.

23:06That artwork now belongs to everyone. You are free to let it go of any personal attachment. Criticism is not about you and your life, but about that person and their interpretation of the art. With this mindset, I find it easy to sort out the gems of proper critique from negative comments. So basically, I mean, that's the high level. He writes a little bit more there. But actually, I really love that. That feels very Rick Rubin to me. Feels very Rick Rubin. Yeah. I mean, listen, it's written by Alex Gray, but... But it's got hints of Rick Rubin. It's got hints of Rick Rubin in there. But I really do love that.

23:41It's harder to view your work on YouTube as hanging a piece of art on a wall because the difference is if you, the artist, are standing there and listening to people, that's a lot more challenging as the artist. But I understand the sentiment here and I really do love it. Yeah, I think I said this last week, but there is this element of once you put out your work, that's the full story for the audience. Right. So if there was anything else you were thinking about, you know, if a mistake or a tough week led to a certain type of decision in the edit or anything, all of that is not included. The audience only has what is presented in front of them, and they will make assumptions good and bad, and you have to know that.

24:26That they are filling in any gray areas with what they want to believe, and that can be based off their life. So you have to take that into account. One thing I want to add to this, there is a section in Creativity, Inc., the book about Pixar that we bring up often, where Ed Catmull talks about how it's important to have the belief that you are not your ideas. especially when you're in the building and creation process when you're pitching ideas you're pitching feedback to someone it can often i have taken it personally sometimes yeah of course if i make a suggestion for a change in one of our edits or i show a graphic design and you don't like it or the office doesn't like it it's so easy to take that personally but it's a good practice to not.

25:21Yeah. Yeah. Because you are not your ideas. You're just trying something. Even if you tried really hard, you're just trying something. You don't know. No one. It's all it's like so subjective. It is very hard to remove yourself, especially when your channel name is your name and, you know, it's your face and you're the one delivering the message. It's very different in Creativity Inc. They're talking about making animations with Pixar. And yes, those are their ideas playing out. But I do think YouTube is different in that you're sitting in front of the camera. You're the one delivering the idea to the audience.

25:51And when people don't like it, there's more layers of your personal identity to go through than in other ideas. And your opportunity to adjust is only in the next work that you make. Right. Right. There's no looking back. So I do just want to note that on this, we just brought up three books. This book by Alex Gray, Rick Rubin's Creative Act, which we talk about a lot, and then Creativity Inc. And someone suggested a Colin and Samir book club. Uh, they made an interest form on the subreddit said, would anyone be interested in attending a book club where we read books, uh, related to being a creator slash recommended by Colin and Samir and their guests.

26:31I think it'd be a great way to get to know each other and creators from even more of a community around being a Colin and Samir fan. That sounds awesome. Should we make a, like, what if we made a book club channel in the discord? I'm all in that would be so cool we make like every month there's a new book and it's all related to stuff that like has really uh inspired us or even stuff that we want to read that'd be awesome yeah I'm just smiling right now because I'm thinking about a stand-up bit from Nate Bargazzi or how do you say his name Bargetzi try Charlie XCX again and then let's go yeah someone else may know who I'm talking about but it is a stand-up bit that I watched this weekend about just about reading and you know i can't i'm not gonna say the joke i don't remember the joke fully but it was just the sentiment of like how difficult reading is and when you like turn a page and there's so many words and you're like just give me an effing break like like just give me a second to breathe sometimes yeah i do that with chapters sometimes i'll like flip to see how many pages and i'll be like i'll literally get so overwhelmed i'll be like you gotta be kidding me right now like there's 17 more pages or you're trying to flip to see where the end of the chapter is and it's a few more pages than you would like.

27:40That's what I'm saying. It's like eight pages. Worst. Okay. This question comes from Morgan in the discord. My socials are flopping after years of successful income. I've been an influencer on TikTok and Instagram since 2020. 500k on TikTok and 100k on Instagram. It's been my full-time job since January 2021, but these past six months or so I've noticed a very sudden decline in engagement and in job offerings and it's scary. I know I just have to get another job at some point if I can't make enough money but I'm feeling like I've failed myself because I was so successful at one point and now I just can't seem to reach an audience like I used to.

28:25I've always made relatively the same content and don't feel like I've made any sudden changes which is why I'm so confused as to the drop in views. I guess I'm looking for advice or to hear anyone else's experiences. Thanks. I do want to acknowledge that that is scary. I appreciate you sharing that, especially if you can't comprehend or fully understand why it's happening. And it's your full-time job. And I'm sure you enjoy it. So an interesting thing is it became her full-time job in January of 2021, which probably means that the pandemic, as it was for a lot of creators, was a huge accelerant for her.

29:07because there was a really huge demand for creators and for video because everyone had a ton of available time on their hands. And a lot of people came and offered the supply. And a lot of people now have careers because of that time. And we're now in a point where I think things have leveled out a little bit. the supply in terms of like supply and demand for content and even there are factors of even just the fact that entertainment concerts going out like physical events things are just obviously like fully in flux and sometimes that can be part of of the dynamic that you know audience behavior can change platforms can change just because of like what's happening in the world yeah i mean what you're talking about is like um the total amount of available attention of your audience and i'm saying of your specific audience so everything that we all you and i everything we do and every piece of advice we give to any creator like we spoke at usc recently and we gave the same advice number one is always going to be who is your audience so who's it for and then the second question is why do they watch so who's it for why do they watch audience and value.

30:27Now, if that audience is watching you strictly for entertainment, then you're in a situation where if they can get entertained somewhere else, you're competing with that. And like you're saying, as more available entertainment started to come about in 2021 and 2022, now you're in a situation where you are competing with serious entertainment. And that entertainment might even be like a friend wanting to go out to dinner. It might be, it's just wherever their attention is going. And that's where you have to now go to that second piece, which is value. Entertainment does have value to it, of course.

31:05But when you think about like exactly why, why are they watching you? Why are they looking at your stuff? If they can get that value somewhere else, then you might be in a situation where something like this could happen. and you're also got to zoom out and explore that platforms change. One line that's really important in what you said was, um, you've been making relatively the same content that might work depending on the platform, but I assume on TikTok and Instagram, that's, that's not really going to work unless you'd like nailed a format. Like we talked about Jack coins track star, right?

31:44Which is like right now that format is hitting. Um, so either you have a format, but if you're making like just kind of generally the same lifestyle content, you're going to fall out of a term that we use, which is content market fit. We talk about it's got to be what you want to make, what the audience wants and needs, and what the platform wants. And if all three of those boxes are checked, then you're going to be in a good place. But those are like constantly moving. And you kind of have to adjust each one of those at all times. You always have to make sure it's what you want to watch. You always have to make sure that you're providing value to the audience.

32:23And then you always have to make sure that it's what the platform needs at that time. And I think short form vertical platforms are a moving target, like a big moving target. I think you have to, as you're catching steam as a content creator, start thinking about how are you transitioning this audience into, let's say, a newsletter like we have or into a discord server or into you know even on instagram they have those broadcast channels something like that where you can actually have a deep relationship with that audience i think it's so incredibly important for the next chapter of the creator economy and creators to really recognize like how do i build depth with this audience how do i provide value that only i can provide i totally agree with that i also think when it comes to some of that fear of, I know I'm going to have to get a job if this doesn't work.