A YouTuber who gradually 'replaced himself' with artificial intelligence for an entire month has challenged viewers to see if they had noticed.
In a recent video, content creator Sambucha said that 'nobody will notice' how he progressively integrated AI throughout his channel.
To his 9.2 million subscribers, he explained: "So it's basically going to be a litmus test for how much we can get away with, until my audience notices that I'm replacing myself with AI."
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Below is his eight step process:
Step 1 - Create an idea with AI
Sambucha heads on to ChatGPT to ask it to create some short video ideas for him.
"Can you please come up with a 62nd short idea for YouTube, similar to the channel Sambucha, who posts fun, entertainment and educational content, sometimes reaction and some random stuff," is what his prompt was.
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The OpenAI then came up with the following video idea: "The most rigged game in the world."
"You know what? That's actually a decent short idea. So I will make a short on the most rigged games in the world. I wonder if people will think that that's AI generated?" the influencer said.
The video itself is a 9:16 clip with the top half showing clips of games, and the bottom being a shot of Sambucha, who is narrating the clip.
Result - nobody noticed
Step 2 - Replace a thumbnail with AI
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"But let's move on to stage two now and get a bit more AI. And this time it's going to be a lot more obvious, because I will be literally replacing one of my thumbnails on a long form video with an AI generated thumbnail," he said.
Sambucha selected one of his videos that 'has literally gotten only one view in the last 24 hours, put it into the hands of basically a single person to see if they'll call out that thumbnail'.
On his video titled 'I almost fought Jonah Hill', he generated an AI-based thumbnail, and guess what?
Result - nobody noticed
Step 3 - Post AI Instagram story
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During this step, the content creator takes a selfie by using an AI filter on Snapchat and then uploads it to his Instagram story.
After sharing it on his story, he said only about five percent of people had some doubts with the image.
"Okay, we have one person who straight up, basically pointed out that this is fake," Sambucha explained.
"He said, for real, thought that was real. You got plastic surgery. Oh, that's kind of close. All right. So there's a couple of people who got wind of the fact that this wasn't a genuine picture, but it's not enough for me to kind of stop this experiment."
Result - only some people noticed
Step 4 - Use an AI voice in short
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For step four, the YouTuber uses character.ai to replace his voice with AI in one of his shorts.
"So I posted 'how quickly can you spend $100 billion' and it's already at a million views in about eight hours," the content creator said.
"So this is a high performing short, and we're going to see now if anybody called out the fact that I used an AI voice at any point.
"1,200 comments, though. I have a feeling there's going to be a couple comments here."
You guessed it, no one realised.
Result - no one noticed
Step 5 - Use AI in a short
"So I have a short here, 'products that have never raised their prices'. So at the very end here, usually at the end of some of my shorts, I say, 'pretty cool, right?' And it's just me saying it normally. But not only am I gonna have an AI voice say that line, but it's also gonna be an AI generated avatar of me," Sambucha said.
And the influencer thought he'd got away with it again until users on Reddit were starting to catch on.
"is Sam doing a deep fake slash AI challenge?" one person questioned.
Result - people are starting to notice
Step 6 - Make another YouTuber believe
During the next stage, he said he wanted to 'fool another YouTuber' that they're actually talking to him, 'but my entire response chain is gonna be done by AI'.
"So it's not gonna be me actually talking to this person. It's gonna be completely AI," the social media start explained.
However, Sambucha wasn't ever going to fool one of his mates with this one.
Result - his friend definitely noticed
Step 7 - Writing 'this is AI' in an actual short
In one of his videos, the YouTuber decided to write 'this is AI' on and off throughout the clip to see if anyone would notice.
"All right, I don't think anybody is noticing that this has AI in it, even though I said it five or six times in the video. This is looking good for us," he said.
Result - no one noticed
Step 8 - Use AI in long-form video
"So for this long integration, I'm gonna hide it within like the 35-minute mark, and it's actually gonna be trash AI.
"So the video I'm gonna be putting it on is a video where I'm ranking every shorts YouTuber. It comes out on February 20, so that'll be the release of it. And that video is about 42 minutes long, so I'm gonna bury like a 10 second section at like the 35 minute mark," he explained.
Result - only 'two' out of 1,600 comments noticed
Topics: YouTube, Technology, AI, Artificial Intelligence
Anish Vij