Thoughts of artificial intelligence and its prophesied global takeover are older than you might think. Though still in its infancy, A.I. has come quite a long way since its inception in the early 1950s, and what we are seeing now is only the beginning, but it is evolving faster than anyone anticipated. From art to chat and even recent video games, A.I. has been used in all sorts of spaces, and we are seeing it again in the realm of VTubing.
We’ve touched on VTubers and talked extensively about A.I. (and why artists hate it) in previous articles, but these two concepts have come together in a 15 million-subscriber channel called Kwebbelkop. For a long time, Kwebbelkop has been a massive channel, largely geared towards children with Minecraft videos, before making a hard turn into A.I. content.
Who Is Kwebbelkop?
For those who aren’t aware of, or haven’t heard his name in the online space, Kwebbelkop is a YouTuber who has been making videos since 2011. He used to fly solo until he formed a trio with his friends and prominent YouTubers, Jelly and Slogoman, and made a separate channel called Robust. Kwebbelkop has experienced incredible success with his YouTube career. He was part of Pewdiepie’s YouTube network, but it was short-lived. He also left Robust in 2019, citing mental health issues as the reason why he could no longer proceed with the group.
For years, he had been wanting to replace himself with A.I. to help streamline his process. Then, out of the blue (no pun intended), he created an A.I. VTuber called Bloo, which he later used as a benchmark for his Kwebbelkop A.I. What pushed the notion of digitising himself was the fact that Bloo rakes in 10 million views per month with no human input, and he aims to do the same with his main channel.
The A.I. Plunge
— Kery (@KeryPogu) August 6, 2023
During this hard turn, Kwebbelkop announced that he would be hands-off from the entire process as he would let A.I. do everything and is now releasing his purely AI-driven work, the first of which is a Minecraft video where the only human input was the gameplay. Though the view count isn’t as stellar as his previous work, Kwebbelkop is largely proud of the reception to his Minecraft gameplay, as it broke the 100k mark; however, the video has been bombarded with dislikes and has been eaten alive in its very own comment section.
He confirmed in his social media that he is still in charge of his X account. Unfortunately, he’s left to fend for himself against the mountain of hateful comments received with regards to anything A.I. He has been debating the stance of A.I. to the best of his ability night and day, but people aren’t budging.
Replacing myself with ai on YouTube has been a challenging journey.
The moment Kwebbelkop ai is launched is when the real journey finally begins.
I believe 99.9% of influencers will be ai generated within the next 10 years.
— Kwebbelkop (@Kwebbelkop) June 23, 2023
Regardless of the backlash he has received, Kwebbelkop remains firm in his stance that A.I. content is the future and even theorised that “99.9%” of VTubers will be A.I. in the next 10 years – but frighteningly enough, he might not be off the mark.
Hot Take
We may think that sitting in front of a computer and webcam and making videos is easy; that may be true for the first couple of videos, but it eventually becomes taxing, as it is – first and foremost – a job. Many YouTubers have been quitting recently due to burnout, and Kwebbelkop, before his digital transformation, was one of them. This has been the driving factor for Kwebbelkop’s argument on X, but in his argument, he also exposes why this is such a bad idea.
He took to X and argued his case and A.I., and the vast majority of answers he received were almost uniform, saying that there is no real soul in those videos, as they are just made for the sake of making easy money. As seen in the post above, his replies highlight the major problem with AI: people wouldn’t know that the content is A.I., which is nothing short of deception. Additionally, he seems to enjoy the idea that most online personalities will be replaced by machines in the future, which is a truly horrifying dystopian concept.
There is no good argument that can be made for fully-A.I. content other than to make a quick buck, as once everything is set up, you don’t have to lift a finger. He can produce several videos, have them go live, and rake in the profit. Unfortunately, YouTube has become competitive; it is no longer a space where people can share videos and laugh at memes, but a place where you can make money. Many people don’t do YouTube because they still enjoy it (there are some who do, but they may be few and far between); they do it because they need that paycheck. And as sad as it may seem, people may start to pivot towards that idea.
