This Gaming YouTuber Has Replaced Himself With AI — And Fans Have Opinions

After years of working to amass a YouTube following of more than 15 million viewers, Kwebbelkop (real name Jordi Van Den) is ready to retire. However, it looks like he’s not ready to let his YouTube channel sit and gather dust, so instead he’s developed an AI replica of himself to take the reins.

That’s right — Kwebbelkop is stepping back from his YouTube channel to let an AI personality take over. But what exactly will that look like? And will it really still be Kwebbelkop in those videos?

The project is still rather new, so there’s still a lot we don’t know, but here’s what has happened so far.

As artificial intelligence continues to creep into more and more of our daily lives, Kwebbelkop has decided to use the technology to create 100% AI videos for his YouTube channel. But just because the creator now has the tools to generate entirely AI videos, it sounds like those won't be the only videos uploaded to his channel.

“Gonna say this one final time,” reads a tweet from Kwebbelkop. “Kwebbelkop AI is not 100% AI, so all the comments about how it’s soulless and how it’s AI make you look really stupid.”

Kwebbelkop also notes that he has removed himself from the YouTube channel and is “now 100% focused on only making content via AI.”

For now, it seems like there will still be some input from the Kwebbelkop team when producing these new AI-generated videos — though it’s unclear what form that will take. It also seems like the goal is for 100% AI videos to eventually take over the entire channel, and fans are mixed on how they feel about the AI takeover.

“I don’t care if it's 80% AI or 20%, it doesn’t feel human,” wrote one viewer.

Another viewer claims that “if [Kwebbelkop] just did this in silence and stopped talking so much smack, [they’d] have so much more impact.”

One of the harshest comments says that Kwebbelkop “hit rock bottom and then somehow kept digging.”

While a large portion of the community isn’t a fan of the switch to AI, others are saying that this just might be the future of entertainment.

“Think we start to see more and more YouTubers head this way, AI is the future whether you like it or not.”

Many others say that they don’t care about AI — as long as the content is entertaining and they can’t tell the difference, then it doesn’t matter how it was generated.

Since making the jump to AI content, Kwebbelkop has seen a boost in viewership. Most of the newest AI videos are getting around 100,000 viewers, while older, non-AI content is typically less than 50,000.

A tweet from Kwebbelkop confirms the info, stating that both view count and subscriber numbers are up.

Whether that trend will stick around after the initial thrill wears off remains to be seen, but no doubt this isn’t the last we’ve heard of creators replacing themselves with AI personalities.