YouTube Has an AI Problem

So John Oliver recently called me a quote, "leather-clad child" on his show when he was talking about AI content, and he said that AI content was ruining the internet. And you know what? He's absolutely right, but not in the way that you think. And look, I'll admit it, I do wear a lot of leather jackets, and yes, I do look like I'm 12 years old, but here's what John Oliver got right. YouTube does have an AI problem, and it's about to get a whole lot worse. But here's what he missed. This AI problem is actually going to be the biggest opportunity on YouTube for people who use it the right way. And 99% of people are going to use it the wrong way. While everybody else is drowning in AI slop, I'm gonna show you exactly how I use what I like to call the anti-commodity system to not just survive, but absolutely dominate on YouTube in this new AI-saturated landscape. But the thing is, it's really not saturated because 99% of people are not doing this right. It's only saturated if you're producing commoditized content, meaning content that everybody else is producing with the same tools. Now, by the way, if you're new here, my name is Matt Parr, it's great to meet you. I built up over 12 different successful faceless YouTube channels over the years, and I've seen how the YouTube landscape has changed. I've grown multiple channels to over a million subscribers, and I've helped over 10,000 students create their very own successful channels as well. Now I know what you're thinking. You're probably saying, Matt, if AI on YouTube is such a problem, why should I even bother starting a channel right now at all? Well, hear me out because what I'm about to share with you will absolutely change the way you think about AI and YouTube. So as we all know, every single day, thousands of different AI channels are uploading videos onto the platform. And we're talking about the same generic AI voices. Everybody just uses the same voices. They use the same generic stock footage, the same ChatGPT-generated scripts that all sound like they're generated by someone who's never had a conversation with a real human being. And I was just scrolling through YouTube yesterday and I saw like 10 different videos titled almost the exact same thing in the productivity niche with almost identical titles: 10 Morning Habits That Will Change Your Life. Not only were the titles similar, but when I clicked to watch the videos, the scripts were practically word for word written. And the brutal truth is this: 99% of these channels are going to fail, and it's because they're creating that same commoditized content. And AI is going to make it easier to just push a button and generate content. And if you think about it, it's really just a race to the bottom where everybody's just trying to create the cheapest, fastest, and most automated channel possible. Now you might be saying, Matt, so you're saying not to do YouTube automation? That's like your whole thing. You've been talking about this for years. Yes, YouTube automation can definitely work, but only if you automate the right things with AI and you do them in the right way. People like John Oliver just like to look down on all of AI and they say every single AI tool is bad when that's not the truth. The answer is much more nuanced than that. Now as for YouTube changing, I talked about it in one of my past videos where I talked about how YouTube is about to change forever and I talked about how things are becoming more commoditized and I'll link that video down below. And based on my experience running channels in multiple different niches and seeing my students running thousands of different channels, I can tell you that the creators that are going to win in this AI era are the ones that are doing the complete opposite of what everybody else is doing. Now you might be saying, Matt, isn't it a good thing that AI makes it easier to generate content? And couldn't I just generate tons of more content now than before? And you're right, AI can be an incredible tool and it can save you untold amounts of time, but everybody's using it wrong. Let me show you what I mean. Everybody's using AI as a magic button that does everything for them. They go to ChatGPT, they write in a prompt like, "Write me a YouTube script about making money online," and they just copy paste whatever it gives them. No research, no personal experience, no unique perspective. And the result is that YouTube is getting flooded with very low value content that's not actually providing value to the end viewer. Now, always remember that value can be either educational or entertainment value. Now to understand where we're headed, you need to understand the 3 waves of AI content that I've been witnessing over these past few years. Now Wave 1 was the novelty wave. This was back in early 2023 when ChatGPT first exploded. Everybody was amazed that AI could write scripts and viewers were actually curious about AI-generated content. And channels could get away with some pretty basic content because the premise was new and it was interesting. Wave number 2 then was the saturation phase. This is where we are right now. The novelty has worn off and YouTube has been getting absolutely flooded with AI-generated content. Most of it's garbage. People are getting tired. They're just going to YouTube trying to find answers to their questions, and then they see the same old robot voice that they saw in 20 other videos. And honestly, the content just feels soulless. Now let's talk about the third wave, which is the wave that we're heading to, and that is the sophistication phase. The channels that survive long term are going to be the ones that use AI strategically, not as a replacement for human creativity, but rather as a tool to enhance it. And the people who aren't using AI are going to be lapped multiple times because AI can allow us to do things way faster and allow us to outsource things that in the past we'd have to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to freelancers to do for us, or we'd have to spend hundreds of hours doing all of the work ourselves. but again, only if we do it in the right way. And if you do it in the right way, you're gonna have a massive advantage over everybody else. So what exactly is this anti-commodity system? It's a 3-step framework that separates the AI slop while still leveraging AI to save you time and money. Now first things first, instead of just being another generic faceless YouTube channel, and I know I've been talking about faceless YouTube channels for years, faceless YouTube channels aren't going anywhere. I also did a video recently on this where I dispelled the myth that YouTube was cracking down on faceless channels. No, they're simply enforcing the same things that they've been enforcing for years, but they're putting in some new protocols to help them identify spam AI content. And I showed you in that video what that spam content looked like, and I gave you examples of the niches not to do. So if you're thinking of starting a YouTube niche, make sure to watch that video so you don't accidentally make that type of content. So you can still do faceless content, but don't just be the same generic faceless content that everybody else is doing. That's easy to produce. Instead, what I recommend doing is creating what I like to call a brand avatar for your channel. Now look, it's no secret that personal YouTube channels where you show your face and you get behind a camera are going to convert better in terms of converting viewers to selling a product or converting viewers however else you want it to when compared to a faceless channel. That's just the reality of it because people feel a connection when they know there's somebody behind a channel and it's not just a company, random company channel. This is coming from somebody who runs a personal channel like you're watching right now and a bunch of different faceless channels as well. So you might be saying, Matt, create a brand avatar? Doesn't that mean I'm gonna have to show my face? And no, it actually doesn't. You can still run a completely faceless channel, but here's the secret. You're gonna create what I like to call a brand avatar for your channel. And by doing that, you're gonna give your channel personality. Let's say you were running a travel channel. Instead of just having generic stock footage with a voiceover, which can certainly work. I mean, look at channels like Jet Set Genius. They're getting over a million views a month with just generic stock footage videos. But instead, what I recommend doing, if you want to make as much as you possibly can from your channel in terms of monetization outside of just ad revenue— and that's where the real monetization is— then what you could do is create a channel called Jake the Traveler. And you could create an AI character, which you can literally generate using something like ChatGPT, who becomes the face of your channel. But here's where most people mess this up. They think that creating an avatar just means generating a random face and calling it a day. That's not what I'm talking about. Your avatar needs to have a backstory, opinions and personality traits, a unique perspective on your niche, consistent visual branding, and a reason for existing. You wanna make it seem like there's a real personality behind your channel. And to give you a practical example of this, I had one of my students who's running a productivity channel, and he was doing okay, just doing generic, you know, random productivity videos. But I told him instead of just doing this random faceless generic content, generate a personality to be the personality of the channel, which he did. And by doing that, he now had a personality who is a former corporate burnout who discovered productivity systems that changed his life. He had strong opinions on which productivity apps were overrated because he actually used them. He had personal stories with his own struggles with procrastination. And he had a slightly sarcastic sense of humor, just like a real person. And the result from this was a huge increased sense of community between everybody watching the videos. People would comment things like, "I love Alex's take on this." They loved the jokes that he threw in there by finding jokes that went viral in the comment sections of his videos that got the most amount of likes. He'd throw those into future videos. And suddenly people weren't just watching random productivity videos. They were following Alex's journey and advice. So we live in a unique time now where you can benefit from having a personal channel without even having a real personal channel. And here's the beautiful part. You can literally generate Alex's face in 30 seconds using something like ChatGPT's image generator or something like Midjourney. You can create different expressions, different outfits, different settings. You can even use AI voice cloning to use your own voice as Alex's voice. So it'll be a voice that not many other people are using across all of your different videos using something like ElevenLabs. For example, I cloned my voice and I actually have it out there for for free, anybody can use my voice. And I've seen tons of channels popping up using that voice because it's more unique than just those top 5 voices that are recommended from ElevenLabs that 99% of people are too lazy, so they just choose one of those voices instead of just going a little bit of extra work. Because trust me, that little bit extra that you do in the beginning of setting up your channel is worth it. But the key here is that Alex isn't just an AI-generated face, he's a fully developed character with a purpose. Now I can already see the comment sections filling up with people saying, but Matt, isn't this just fake? Aren't people gonna figure out that this isn't a real person behind my channel? Your audience doesn't actually care if your avatar is AI-generated as long as the content is actually valuable and you build a character who had similar pain points than the people who are watching your videos, especially if you're doing like educational type of content. And if you're doing entertainment type of content, this can still work very well. But if you watch any of my past videos, you'll know that I recommend doing educational type of YouTube channels because you can make a lot more, you can monetize them immediately without ever even being monetized, and there's a whole slew of benefits for educational channels, so I highly recommend them. And the difference between successful virtual persona YouTube channels and ones that fail isn't whether they're the most realistic. There's literally ones that are just clearly an AI avatar. You don't wanna be generating something that looks indistinguishable from a human anyways. It's whether they either provide value or entertainment. That is what matters. And now let's get into part 2, which is using context-driven scripts. This is where most AI channels fail miserably. They go to ChatGPT and they say, write me a script about the top 10 places to visit in Italy, as if 1,000 other people haven't already done that. And there's not going to be 1,000 other scripts that are almost exactly the same on YouTube on that subject. And then they just upload whatever generic garbage that ChatGPT spits out. The problem with this approach is that you're uploading the same generic garbage that everybody else is doing. There's no unique perspective, no unique insights, and no reason for people to watch your video instead of the 1,000 other videos on the topic. And honestly, this problem also existed before AI was even a thing. I saw people just copying other videos on YouTube over and over again And YouTube was becoming commoditized before AI. AI is just speeding up what was naturally happening anyways. So it's more pertinent than ever to make sure you're not just using something like ChatGPT for generating your scripts. The smart creators are using something that I like to call context-based scripting. Let's say you wanted to create a video called How to Start a YouTube Channel in 2025. Instead of just asking ChatGPT to generate you a generic script, What I recommend doing is going to the top videos on YouTube and then gathering all of the most pertinent information from each of those videos. Let's say we open 3 at a time, which is what I usually do. Get all the best information from there and then go on places like Reddit and other places on the internet to get even more information on common pain points people have. Put those all into the script, go in the comment sections of those original videos, get all of the best information from that, whether it be jokes, whether it be additional information or tips that people have, Put those all into your script as well, and you've got a god-tier script that's actually gonna give a lot of value because it's based on context. Now you might be saying, Matt, this sounds like a lot of work. How can I use AI to speed this up? Well, I actually built a tool specifically for that, and I use it myself on all my YouTube channels, and it's called TubeMagic. Now TubeMagic is the world's best YouTube script writing tool, and unlike other script writers that just use a backend like ChatGPT to just generate your script for you, What TubeMagic does is it uses Claude, which first of all is the best AI writer that sounds the most human. But the most important thing that it does is it gets context from other YouTube videos that you put in. So you're not gonna have the same sounding scripts as thousands of other people because you can put in multiple different videos as context. Plus you can even upload files you find, put in URLs that you find, and so on. And then you'll have an incredibly well-researched script that's actually going to give a lot of value. And not only that, but we also train TubeMagic on the absolute best systems for writing YouTube scripts. So we're training it on things like the best hooks on YouTube, the best retention frameworks, the best way to keep re-hooking people throughout the video. And all of that's going to be included automatically. Now, of course, you can do this all yourself if you want, which is far better than using ChatGPT. But even better than that, use something like TubeMagic. It'll avoid you having to hire scriptwriters. It's the best script writing tool on the planet. You can try it out down at the link below. Now, another question I get asked a lot is, Matt, you're saying to add my own perspective. What if I don't have a whole lot of experience in the niche that I'm doing? How in the world can I add my own perspective then? And this is where a lot of people get stuck because the secret is that you don't need to be an expert. You need to be a good researcher and information curator. Think of yourself as an information DJ. You're taking existing content remixing it to be better and something new. Feel free to watch the video called "Everything is Remix" or "Everything is a Remake," something like that, and it basically goes over the concept that not just YouTube videos, but everything in life is a remix over and over again, and YouTube videos are no exception to that. You wanna take what's already worked in the past and make it better. For example, if you're creating content on the best productivity systems, you don't have to have all the best systems yourself, or invented some new insane system. You just need to research what's working, test it yourself, and then share your findings with your audience. But here's where the context-driven approach really shines. Instead of just regurgitating the same productivity advice that every other channel is doing, you can analyze what all the other top channels are missing and then include it in your channel and kind of take the best parts of multiple different channels so you have the absolute best videos on YouTube. I'm telling you this from experience, this is how you crush it with any type of channel. It's just in the past I had to hire scriptwriters to do this process for me, which costed thousands and thousands of dollars, or I had to do it myself in the case of my personal channel here, and that took an insane amount of time. But if you want to save a lot of time, just use something like TubeMagic. And this brings me to the most important part of the Anti-Commodity System. While everybody else is focused on mass-producing garbage, You are going to focus on producing actual value. Don't just upload 7 videos a week because some guru told you to do that. Instead, upload only 2 to 3 videos per week that are higher quality than if you did a video every single day that actually solves problems for your audience. Make content that you personally would wanna watch. But what does value actually mean? Lemme break it down. In terms of educational value, what I mean by that is simply making videos that when the viewer is done watching them, they're gonna walk away with something that they didn't know before. For. Ideally specific and actionable insights. In terms of entertainment value, even if you're in an educational niche like I recommend, your videos should be engaging or entertaining because most people have very short attention spans. You need to re-hook them throughout the video. Basically, just make sure it's not boring. Incorporate some of your own stories. Incorporate jokes when you can. In terms of emotional value, your videos should make people feel something, whether it's inspiration, motivation, or even just the satisfaction of learning something new. And then also there's something known as social value. So do your videos give something for people to talk about socially? Content that sparks discussions in the comment sections are ones that YouTube are more likely to push. And the secret is that it doesn't matter whether it's a positive or a negative reaction. So sometimes it pays to have a very strong opinion on something just because you know you're gonna be very divisive and 50% of the people are gonna leave a nasty comment on your video. And that's totally fine, it'll actually help your video. As long as you keep people on the video. You don't wanna necessarily bamboozle people into clicking your video and then not doing what you promised. But instead, what I just mean is feel free to be a little controversial when you can as well, as long as you don't go too far to the point that you're gonna get canceled. Now you might be saying, "Matt, this all sounds great, but which AI tools should I actually be using?" So I wanna break down for you right now all the best tools that I recommend to implement on the anti-commodity system effectively. For script writing, TubeMagic, hands down. For avatar creation, you can use ChatGPT. For voice generation, ElevenLabs is the gold standard, but I recommend creating a clone of your own voice. For video creation, you can use any editor out there, but I have another software called vid.ai, which you can check out, which will generate videos for you automatically. You can also upload your own clips onto vid.ai, as well as having a huge database of stock footage clips also built into it. And recently I've heard a lot of people saying that, Matt, doesn't this take a lot more work than just simply mass-producing AI-generated content? And you're right, it does take a little bit more work, especially in the beginning, but here's why this approach is gonna make you a lot more money. The commodity channels out there are usually competing for $3 to $10 RPMs, meaning they'll make like $3 to $10 per 1,000 views, 'cause they're limited to just ad revenue. If you build a channel in the way that I'm describing to you now, you're building something with value that people actually trust, and you're building actual IP value, meaning if anything happens to YouTube in the future, you've still got your character, you've still got your brand that you've built up, and that brand can be used on whatever social media platform is big at the time. That being said, I think YouTube is going to be around for a long time into the future. I think it's only going to continue to grow over the next 10 years, and that's why I'm going all in on YouTube right now. But it's just another benefit for you. So let's say you have a typical AI spam channel in the productivity niche. You get a million views a month, you get a $5 RPM, so you're making like $5K a month. A lot of people might say, Matt, that's great, but the problem is that that channel could be making a lot more. If you use the anti-commodity system and you get only 100,000 views, which is one-tenth the amount of views, then you're making $500 a month from AdSense. But here's the kicker. Let's say you also make $2K a month from affiliate partnerships with software you're promoting, which only grows month after month because you're getting people on recurring plans, and people are more likely to sign up for those because they trust you more than a spam channel. Then let's say you make an extra $5K from your own digital course, and then let's say you make an extra $3K from community memberships that you sell. That's $10,500, which is two 2 times more than a channel that's getting 10 times the amount of views. And if you compare it on a view-per-view basis, that's over 20 times more that that channel is making per view. And the beautiful part about this is once you implement this and you build trust with your audience, scaling becomes even easier. You can launch more adjacent products whenever you want. You can build an email list, which is building a business outside of YouTube, and so many other things. Now here's what I think is gonna be happening on YouTube over the next 12 months. YouTube is gonna get really good at detecting and demoting spam AI content. We're already seeing this implemented with their updated monetization policies. The channels that survive after this are going to be the ones that use AI as a tool rather than a crutch to just do all the work for them. Now, I don't know if you know who Gary Vaynerchuk is. He's a famous business guy online, and he predicted that we're gonna see a 50/50 split between personal brand channels and then virtual characters like what I'm describing. And he's right. The anti-commodity system positions you perfectly for this. Now, before I give you your action plan, let me go over a couple mistakes that I see a lot of people make just to make sure you can avoid these and monetize your channel as much as possible. And mistake number 1 is making the avatar too generic. Don't just create a random face and call it a day. Your avatar needs to have a personality, a backstory, and a reason for existing. Mistake number 2 is relying too heavily on AI. Basically, don't just use ChatGPT to generate your scripts. Mistake 3 is ignoring your audience. Don't just create content in a vacuum. Pay attention for what your audience is asking for in the comments and create that. Mistake 4 is not monetizing early enough. Do not wait until you're getting millions of views on your channel to monetize. Monetize your channel from day 1. This is the biggest thing that's brought me the biggest results on YouTube. Financially speaking. And the next mistake is trying to be everything to everyone. Instead, pick a specific niche and position your channel to be the number one channel in that niche to solve that problem. It's better to be the number one channel for 100,000 people than it is to be the number one-hundred channel for a million people. So now, like I promised, I'm gonna give you an action plan of exactly what to implement week by week for implementing this. On week one, you create your avatar, you choose your niche, you research successful channels, You create your brand avatar with a backstory and a personality. You generate multiple different images and you pick an AI voice. You write a 1-page character bible for your character. On week 2 then, we'll plan your content strategy. We'll research the top 20 videos in your niche. We'll identify gaps and opportunities. We'll create your first month of video topics and we'll set up your TubeMagic account and learn how to use that. On week 3 then, we'll actually start producing videos. You'll create your first script using a context-driven technique. Whether it's using AI or not using AI. I would just recommend using it because it'll save you untold amounts of hours. We'll generate your first video using your avatar. We'll set up your channel branding and optimization, and we'll create your first lead magnet or product outline. And then on week 4, we'll launch and optimize. We'll upload your first 3 to 5 videos, analyze your performance, and adjust your strategy accordingly, and start building your email list and monetizing from day 1. But the key here is not to try to do everything at once. Take it one step at a time. But make sure to take action because instant imperfect action always is better than delayed perfect action. So look, while John Oliver is making fun of my leather jacket, which looks pretty nice if I do say so myself, I'm honestly just trying my best to help people build sustainable businesses on YouTube using AI instead of the generic garbage that's out there that 99% of people are doing. And so the AI revolution is not going to destroy YouTube, but it's 100% going to separate the creators that actually give value from the ones that don't. Because the ones that just want to game the system, they've been there for years, and AI is just allowing them to do it on a bigger scale, which YouTube is cracking down on accordingly. But the people who use AI the right way are going to be the ones that succeed long term, like how I'm showing you. And so the choice is yours now. You can either join the race to the bottom with commoditized AI garbage, or you can use the anti-commodity system to build a real sustainable long-term business with YouTube. Now I know at this point you probably have a lot more questions because there's a lot more that goes into running a successful YouTube channel. I've got secret hacks and secret tips. I've got specific scripts of exactly what to say in your videos to just make sure you can monetize your videos like crazy from day one. And I go over all of that within my paid program, Tube Accelerator. This is not just a course, it's an actual coaching program. And due to that, we only onboard so many people. So if you're interested in that and getting access to me as well as all of my coaches for helping you implement this system and giving you all of my SOPs and documents, if you just want to save a bunch of time doing this, you can feel free to book a call down below. I'll leave a link to Tube Accelerator where you can book a call, speak with my team, and if it's a good fit, honestly, I'd love to see you inside there. If you're on the fence with Tube Accelerator though, I do have another video you can check out next to me right here. It'll go over the system a little bit more in depth and explain it a little bit more in depth on exactly what I'm doing on YouTube now in terms of faceless channels and where YouTube automation is right now. This video right here is basically like a free course for doing this. So make sure to check this out. My name is Matt Parr. Hope you got a ton of value from this video regardless, and I'll talk to you next time. Peace.