Top YouTube creator Mrbeast is worried that AI will affect creators’ livelihoods despite dabbing in using technology themselves. On Monday, creators posted concerns on social media, openly wondering how AI-generated videos would affect “millions of creators who are currently making content for their livelihoods.”
“Scary times,” he added.
Mrbeast, Jimmy Donaldson, is number one on the 2025 list of top creators in 2025, with revenue of $85 million and 634 million followers. What he says and does as a result of his position has a huge impact across the industry. So it’s fair to say that if Mrbeast openly wonders whether AI is an existential threat to his business and others, it’s likely that the little creator is even more worried.
His comments follow the recent launch of Openai’s Sora 2, a new version of audio and video generators, on a mobile app that allows users to create AI with their own videos shared in a Tiktok-style vertical feed. The app was an early hit and quickly hit number one in the US app store after a surge in downloads.
YouTube uses AI and launches something like an AI editing tool. This involves the creator using the video model VEO to generate AI videos to animate stills, or applying different styles to the video. The company also injected AI into its products, including creating clips and highlights from live videos and podcasts. AI Chatbots can answer the questions of authors within YouTube’s channel management software, YouTube Studio.
Mrbeast is also involved in AI, as commenters quickly pointed out. This summer, creators faced considerable backlash from both fans and creators after releasing a tool that uses AI to create video thumbnails. He said he would soon remove the tool from his analytics platform, ViewStats, and replace it with a link to human artists that can be used by the committee.
His company’s charities also sometimes invest in AI.
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There is still debate as to whether the novelty of AI video creation will turn everyone into creators, or whether the best videos need the human creative mind to properly inspire the tools after thinking them. At the same time, some people view AI videos as low-quality content, often referred to as “slops,” and don’t like seeing them in their feeds.
Even if the AI is no longer detectable at some point in the future, it may have been revealed that the creator is using it without revealing it.
