The world’s most popular YouTuber, MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson), has publicly stated that generative artificial intelligence could undermine the incomes of millions of creators who make a living from video production.
The world’s most popular YouTuber, MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson), has publicly stated that generative artificial intelligence could undermine the incomes of millions of creators who make a living from video production.
The author’s statement is reported by TechCrunch. He wrote «Scary times» on his social networks, commenting on the wave of new tools for creating videos. Against the backdrop of the rapid development of video generation, MrBeast asks the question: how to compete with the streams of videos made by neural networks, when the work of millions of creators is at stake. The context makes the message loud: in 2025, he topped the Forbes list with earnings of $ 85 million and has 634 million subscribers, so his position affects the market.
The impetus for the discussion was the launch of Sora 2 from OpenAI — a new version of the audio and video generator along with a mobile application that allows you to create artificial videos (including with your own participation) and publish them in a vertical feed. The application quickly rose to first place in the American App Store. In turn, YouTube is also promoting tools based on artificial intelligence: editorial functions, automatic creation of clips and highlights, video generation using the Veo model (animation of static photos, stylization), and a chat assistant for authors works in the YouTube Studio environment.
The controversy is that MrBeast himself has already experimented with AI: in the summer he launched a tool for creating preview images using neural networks, but after criticism from the community he removed it from his analytics service Viewstats and promised to add links to artists who make covers by hand. His charitable projects have also sometimes invested in AI-based solutions.
Meanwhile, there is a debate in the community: some believe that easy-to-use generators will «open the door» for everyone and lower the barrier to entry to platforms, while others call such content «slop» and complain about cluttering feeds. Even if over time, artificial videos will become difficult to distinguish from human ones, the hidden use of neural networks without disclosure can destroy audience trust and damage reputation.
The stakes are high for the creator ecosystem: platforms compete for new formats and speed of content production, and advertisers for quality and transparency. MrBeast’s statement captures the nerve of the stage: either the industry learns to define standards for transparency and labeling, or it risks turning the AI video «conveyor» into a threat to fair competition and creator monetization.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how the world’s most popular YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) is working on launching a virtual mobile operator that will use the networks of major telecoms, but will be sold under his brand. The project could start in 2026.
