AI-driven VTubers like Bloo revolutionise content creation, earning millions

One AI-powered VTuber that has achieved success is Bloo, who has bright blue wavy hair and dark blue eyes. However, Bloo is not human. He has built a massive following of 2.5 million subscribers and garnered over 700 million views through videos of him playing popular games such as Grand Theft Auto, Roblox, and Minecraft.

“I’m here to keep my millions of viewers worldwide entertained and coming back for more,” Bloo said in an interview with CNBC, “I’m all about good vibes and engaging content. I’m built by humans, but boosted by AI.”

Bloo was created by Jordi van den Bussche, a longtime YouTuber also known as kwebbelkop. Van den Bussche, a 29-year-old from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, explained that he created Bloo after struggling to keep up with the demands of content creation.

“Turns out, the flaw in this equation is the human, so we need to somehow remove the human,” van den Bussche saidม “The only logical way was to replace the human with either a photorealistic person or a cartoon. The VTuber was the only option, and that’s where Bloo came from.”

Bloo has already generated over seven figures in revenue, according to van den Bussche. Many VTubers, like Bloo, are “puppeteered,” meaning a human controls the character’s voice and movements in real-time using motion capture or face-tracking technology.

Everything else on Bloo’s channel, from video thumbnails to voice dubbing in other languages, is handled by AI technology from ElevenLabs, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude. Van den Bussche’s long-term goal is for Bloo’s entire personality and content creation process to be run by AI.

Van den Bussche has already tested fully AI-generated videos on Bloo’s channel, but he said the results have not yet been promising. The content doesn’t perform as well because the AI still lacks the intuition and creative instincts of a human, he explained.

“When AI can do it better, faster or cheaper than humans, that’s when we’ll start using it permanently,” van den Bussche said.

Industry expansion

Startup Hedra offers a product that uses AI technology to generate videos up to five minutes long. It raised US$32 million in a funding round in May, led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Infrastructure fund.

Hedra’s product, Character-3, allows users to create AI-generated characters for videos, adding dialogue and other characteristics. CEO Michael Lingelbach told CNBC that Hedra is working on a product that will allow users to create self-sustaining, fully automated characters.

“We’re doing a lot of research to accelerate models like Character-3 to real-time, and that’s going to be a really good fit for VTubers,” Lingelbach said.

Character-3’s technology is already being used by an increasing number of creators experimenting with new formats, and many of their projects are going viral.

One such creator is comedian Jon Lajoie with his Talking Baby Podcast, which features a hyper-realistic animated baby talking into a microphone. Another is Milla Sofia, a virtual singer and artist whose AI-generated music videos attract thousands of views.

These creators are using Character-3 to produce content that stands out on social media, helping them reach wide audiences without the cost and complexity of traditional production.

Faceless AI YouTubers

Creators are increasingly finding profitable ways to capitalise on the generative AI technology introduced by ChatGPT in late 2022.

One growing trend is the rise of faceless AI channels. These are run by creators who use AI tools to produce videos with artificially generated images and voiceovers, which can sometimes earn thousands of dollars a month without the creators ever appearing on camera.

“My goal is to scale up to 50 channels, though it’s getting harder because of how YouTube handles new channels and trust scores,” said a Spain-based creator who goes by the name GoldenHand and who declined to disclose his real name.

Working with a small team, GoldenHand publishes up to 80 videos per day across his network of channels. Some maintain a steady few thousand views per video, while others may suddenly go viral and rack up millions of views, mostly among an audience aged 65 and above.

GoldenHand explained that his content is audio-driven storytelling. He described his YouTube videos as audiobooks paired with AI-generated images and subtitles. Everything after the initial idea is created entirely by AI, he added.

He recently launched a new platform, TubeChef, which gives creators access to his system to automatically generate faceless AI videos starting at $18 a month.

“People think using AI means you’re less creative, but I feel more creative than ever,” he said, “Coming up with 60 to 80 viral video ideas a day is no joke. The ideation is where all the effort goes now.”

Thailand begins to move towards the ‘faceless creator’ era

While the AI VTuber and faceless creator trends have not yet grown significantly in Thailand, several signs indicate that the Thai content industry is entering a period of transition, similar to trends seen abroad.

One clear trend is the growth of YouTube channels using AI technology to produce almost all of their content. This includes automatic scriptwriting with ChatGPT, synthesised voices from ElevenLabs, and image creation using Midjourney and D-ID, replacing traditional filming teams.

Many Thai channels focusing on storytelling, history, or mystery cases – and even ‘supernatural storytelling’ – have started using AI-generated voices and videos to produce large volumes of content daily. 

Some of these channels manage to consistently maintain views in the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands per video, despite not having a large production team behind them.

Additionally, some Thai startups are developing AI presenters or AI voiceovers for use in advertising and education, such as creating automatic educational videos or running marketing campaigns that don’t rely on real actors.

The rise of 'AI Slop'

As AI-generated content becomes increasingly prevalent online, concerns about its impact are on the rise. Some users are particularly worried about the spread of misinformation, especially as it becomes easier to create convincing yet entirely fabricated AI-generated videos.

“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,” said Henry Ajder, founder of Latent Space Advisory, which helps businesses navigate the AI landscape.

Others are frustrated by the sheer volume of low-effort AI content flooding their feeds. This type of material is often referred to as “AI slop” — low-quality, randomly generated content produced using artificial intelligence.

“The age of slop is inevitable,” said Ajder, who is also an AI policy advisor at Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. “I’m not sure what we do about it.”

While this issue is not new, the surge in such content has led to growing criticism from users, who claim it’s becoming harder to find meaningful or original material, particularly on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

However, creators of AI-generated content argue that it all comes down to supply and demand. As long as AI-generated content continues to attract clicks, there’s little incentive to stop producing more of it, said Noah Morris, a creator behind 18 faceless YouTube channels.

Some also argue that AI videos still hold artistic value, and although it’s now easier to create such content, “slop” has always been present on the internet, said Michael Lingelbach, CEO of Hedra.

“There’s never been a barrier to people making uninteresting content,” he said. “Now there’s just more opportunity to create different kinds of uninteresting content, but also more kinds of really interesting content too.”