MrBeast calls out AI as a threat to YouTubers' livelihoods: 'Scary times' (www.businessinsider.com)

YouTube superstar MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) publicly warned that rapidly improving generative video tools could threaten creators’ livelihoods, posting on X that “when AI videos are just as good as normal videos…Scary times.” His comments follow a flurry of platform releases — notably OpenAI’s Sora 2, which can insert realistic-looking people into video from simple text prompts, and YouTube’s new features that auto-generate short videos from podcast transcripts. MrBeast’s unease is rooted in the pace of capability: AI systems that can script, generate, edit and publish video at scale may soon produce content viewers can’t reliably distinguish from human-made work. For the AI/ML community this is a concrete signal that generative models are crossing from technical demos into economic reality, raising urgent technical and policy priorities: robust provenance and watermarking, improved deepfake detection, content attribution standards, monetization and moderation frameworks, and tools that help creators augment rather than replace human labor. MrBeast’s earlier misstep — launching then withdrawing an AI thumbnail generator after community backlash — illustrates creator sensitivities and the reputational risks of automation. The episode underscores the need for researchers and platforms to balance innovation with safeguards that protect creators’ incomes, maintain platform trust, and define ethical deployment paths for powerful video-generation models.