Bloo, a virtual YouTuber powered by AI, has hit 2.5 million subscribers and more than 700 million views playing games like GTA, Roblox, and Minecraft. Created by YouTuber Jordi van den Bussche (aka kwebbelkop), Bloo uses AI tech for thumbnails, voice dubbing, and scripting, though a human still puppeteers his voice and movements.
Van den Bussche aims to fully automate Bloo’s personality and content using AI, but says fully AI-generated videos have fallen flat so far.
"When AI can do it better, faster or cheaper than humans, that’s when we’ll start using it permanently,"
van den Bussche said.
Startup Hedra recently raised $32 million led by Andreessen Horowitz to push its AI video product, Character-3, which creates AI-driven animated characters in real time. CEO Michael Lingelbach said it’s gearing up to launch fully automated AI personalities for creators.
Hedra’s tech is behind viral projects like Jon Lajoie’s hyper-realistic animated baby podcast and Milla Sofia’s virtual singer videos.
Creators are also pumping out “faceless AI” YouTube channels, generating hundreds of videos per day with AI voices and images, targeting audiences often over 65. One creator, GoldenHand from Spain, plans to scale to 50 channels.
"My goal is to scale up to 50 channels, though it’s getting harder
because of how YouTube handles new channels and trust scores,"
GoldenHand said."People think using AI means you’re less creative, but I feel more creative than ever,"
he added.
But the rise of AI content brings complaints about a flood of “AI slop” — low-effort, low-quality AI videos swamping platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Experts fear these videos blur the line between human and AI-made content and could fuel misinformation.
Henry Ajder, founder of Latent Space Advisory, said:
"Even if the content is informative and someone might find it entertaining or useful,
I feel we are moving into a time where … you do not have a way to understand what
is human made and what is not.""The age of slop is inevitable," Ajder added, noting his role as an AI policy advisor at Meta.
Creators like Hedra’s Lingelbach argue AI video offers new creative possibilities, not just noise.
"Now there’s just more opportunity to create different kinds of uninteresting content,
but also more kinds of really interesting content too," he said.
Meanwhile, Google’s recent Veo 3 tool uses YouTube data to generate AI videos with audio, raising new concerns about intellectual property on the platform.
The AI-driven next wave of online creators is here — human puppeteers or not. The question is how quickly AI takes over fully.
