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I wasn't planning to make this video and I especially wasn't planning for it to be the first time in the 10 years that I've been working on the Real Engineering YouTube channel that I talked directly to camera and you, the audience, but it just feels like a matter of survival at this point. I wanted to talk about the recent community post that the Kurzgesagt channel, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, but I don't think anyone does, put up and the impacts it's having on YouTube site-wide. It's just it's not just Kurzgesagt and I don't know if they used AI or not. I'm not here to defend their channel, but I know this is affecting other channels that absolutely do not use AI. I might be one of them. I don't know. But they put up this community post and
talking about how their recent video got flagged by AI by tools that YouTube has implemented to try to combat AI slop. And I find this very concerning because Kurzgesagt is a big enough and influential channel enough that they can find out and correct this, but not everyone can. My channel's performance has been getting worse and worse over the last few months and we are really struggling and I'm not sure if it's because of AI or because of cultural trends within AI. But I was curious on what detection tools and what the detection tool was actually detecting because it seems like it's just attacking faceless channels.
The channels that just use voiceover. Um and aren't really combating the things that are actually AI slop on the platform because I've been trying to get a channel that's been stealing my voice down for the last six months to a year and YouTube have just told me that I can't prove that it's my voice and that they can't do anything about it. And that's with me using every resource at my disposal, using my corporate partner manager through Nebula, through messaging people like Todd to ask for advice, through even asking lawyers, can I sue this channel? But that isn't something that's possible and I don't really want to go through the stress and monetary like requirements to sue someone. That's a very American thing that I
don't really want to participate in. I just want the channel to stop using my voice. each across the region in minutes and a reserve army that can swell from peacetime to wartime over a single weekend. That's Israel. This is impacting voice or faceless channels like mine all over YouTube. And you might have noticed that your favorite YouTube channel, your favorite voice-over faceless channel, has started appearing more on camera like this and this is why because YouTube is punishing us for not showing our face. It seems like we have to have this like proof-of-life moment in the YouTube video to prove that we're not AI and it doesn't make any real sense and it doesn't seem to work, especially when that channel
that's stealing my voice is still up and running without any issue and saying things about Israel and Ukraine that I would never say. It's really upsetting. They're stealing both my credibility and my personality and my like everything. And I think it's impacting how people approach YouTube and the cultural trends within YouTube, even if YouTube is not deliberately attacking faceless channels, I think we're all seeing the impact that AI is having on the trends within YouTube as a platform. I think it's impacting our performance because people just don't know what to trust on the internet anymore. It feels like the
dead internet theory is very much becoming a thing and I notice it myself when I approach YouTube and I click on a video and it's a new YouTube channel and it's just a voice and it's could the script could just be AI generated and I find myself in this thought process for the first minute or so of like is this AI? Can I trust this content? And sometimes I'm sure I get false positives and I click off videos because I think it's AI and it's not. I think this is just the trends that happen on YouTube, too. And I don't want to be the guy. I don't want to be the newspaper salesman that complains about losing my job because online media became a thing.
I'll adapt to YouTube as much as I can. I'll start appearing on camera. It's upsetting to me that I have to do that because I have to do it in front of an audience of millions from the get-go and that is difficult and the pressure involved with that is terrifying. This is the first time any of you will have seen my face um and I'm not really worried about how people will react to that as much as I'm afraid of people just recognizing me in the street and the problems that come along with fame on the internet. Um we've seen it time and time again that being famous on YouTube isn't really great for your mental health.
It's it's not something I value. I value creating what I create and that's the only reason I am appearing on camera right now and talking about the situation because I'm struggling to continue doing this YouTube channel. I'm struggling to make enough money to keep it going. And what I feel like YouTube is really irresponsible about when it comes to throttling channels like this and not giving us the tools to let them know that we're human. I like if I need to submit a passport photo or something to YouTube, if I need to get my channel on a white list, if I need to pinky promise that I'll never use AI cuz I don't. I will. But that doesn't seem to matter to them.
And why it's irresponsible is because faceless channels are often the most expensive type to make because getting in front of camera and talking like this is free. I can do it all day. It's easy. If you've got the personality for it and everything else, it's not a particularly expensive thing to do. My videos cost for animation alone between 10 and 20,000 dollars each. The only reason I can afford to do it is because every single one of my videos is sponsored. And I mostly make my own salary off YouTube ad revenue and that also goes to other people within my company. The Real Science channel has been reliant on Real Engineering for
uh subsidies from my ad revenue for the last for its entire existence more or less. And yeah, that just isn't sustainable anymore because you like Real Engineering used to make between 30 and 40,000 dollars a month. This month we've dipped below 10,000 dollars. And when one of our videos doesn't perform as it usually does, sponsors stop coming back. And when they do come back, they offer us vastly less money. And very quickly we find ourselves in this situation where we can't really afford to continue. And I prefer letting sponsors pay for the content on this channel because they can afford to.
Like if a video doesn't do well or whatever, like you know, they're not losing out too much. Like most of them have millions and millions of dollars. It's not that big of a deal. But I don't like relying on my audience through Patreon because I just don't feel comfortable begging for money from my audience. And I try to provide value to them as much as possible through things like Nebula and wherever else that I can provide value. But that might be changing because we are just struggling to stay afloat at the moment. Um so I am going to share a Patreon link below. And only if you can afford to, only if you want to see Real Engineering
continue make the animations that we create, you should consider supporting the channel on Patreon. Only in those conditions. If you're struggling for money yourself, please don't. Uh we'll be fine. We'll figure something out. I'll work harder as I always do to figure it out. But this AI situation on YouTube is becoming increasingly difficult. And the competition for space on the homepage is just getting higher and higher between shorts taking a higher percentage of the space on the homepage and people who can pump out videos using AI scripts and stuff. I mean, even Hank Green had to apologize recently for using AI on his personal channel. And the reality is, if you're pumping out
videos that frequently, the chances are you are using AI. I'm not sure why anyone is surprised. And I don't want this to be a dig at Hank Green. I understand the pressures that YouTube creators are under as good as anyone. YouTube is such a hard place to compete and everyone is using AI now, whether you want to admit it or not. Most people are using AI and using it for your scripting to me is just a no-go. I feel like it's fairly normal to people are using it as a search engine because Google search has just been gone to Like I will use Gemini search for things, but I only ask it to give me the original sources. I'm not using that AI-generated slop for script. I'm not using it for research.
Like it doesn't make any sense half the time. But like people are using AI tools more and it's this weird landscape of figuring out what is and isn't morally okay to use. And the reality is channels like mine are struggling because everyone is using AI and what I do can't be done with AI. It just can't. Like AI can't generate the scripts that I'm generating. I am explaining things that people haven't explained in my way before. I'm creating animations that AI could never even dream of and I know that because I run a channel I run a company that makes animations for engineering companies and these engineering companies have tried and tried to use AI to generate the animations and they can't and they
come to us instead. And I don't think AI ever will be able to do it because AI can't generate something it's never seen before. And I make things people have never seen before. So if you want to see that continue, consider supporting the channel on Patreon. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the future of YouTube is, but it's not been easy.
