Creator economy sham: MrBeast feels AI slop will kill small creators on YouTube. Truth is, 94 per cent of channels are not monetised
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Creator economy sham: MrBeast feels AI slop will kill small creators on YouTube. Truth is, 94 per cent of channels are not monetised")
Part of this photo contains AI-generated imagery. You get the irony of it? Photograph: (Others)
Gone are the days when amateurish videos could be monetised on YouTube. Production hardware and software are so sophisticated that many uploads can now rival Netflix-quality. Smaller creators, already left scrambling, have now been hit harder by AI slop. Is the 'creative economy a sham?
Isn't it ironic that MrBeast – the man who inspires many youth to become YouTubers through his success story as the most-subscribed channel– worries that artificial intelligence flooding the American video-sharing platform could kill small creators? What many don’t tell you is that 94 per cent of YouTube channels are never monetised. The hype around the so-called "creator economy" is almost essential for platforms like YouTube, which survive and thrive on other people’s content, running billions of dollars’ worth of ads on videos made by small creators – while giving many of them nothing in return. Here’s why MrBeast’s recent statement should be a cautionary tale for anyone hoping to make money on YouTube.
What did MrBeast say?
MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, is currently the most-subscribed YouTuber in the world. In a recent X post, he said: "When AI videos are just as good as normal videos, I wonder what that will do to YouTube and how it will impact the millions of creators currently making content for a living… scary times."
His post, viewed more than 6.3 million times, came as new tools like OpenAI’s Sora 2 are now capable of generating cinematic-quality video from simple text prompts.
MrBeast’s concern is also partially hypocritical. Earlier this year, he faced backlash for launching an AI-powered thumbnail generator via his analytics platform, Viewstats. After creators criticised the move for displacing human artists, MrBeast pulled the tool and instead added a directory for hiring real thumbnail designers. In a follow-up, he stated: “I care more than any of you could ever imagine about the YouTube community… I missed the mark.”
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The sad reality of the creator economy on YouTube: You've been warned
YouTube’s creator economy is already deeply unequal. AI-generated video – heavily promoted by YouTube’s parent companies Google and Alphabet – has added another layer of disruption. Mass-produced, algorithm-friendly videos (sometimes derided as “AI slop”) are increasingly crowding the platform, making it harder than ever for small creators to gain visibility, let alone earn money.
Many of these videos are now being produced by Google-backed systems like Veo and NanoBanana, which can churn out synthetic content at scale. This arms race in content production is eroding the space that was once available to human creators.
Gone are the days when amateur-looking videos filmed on smartphones could reliably generate income. Video production – from hardware to editing software – has become so sophisticated that many uploads now rival Netflix-quality. Smaller creators are left scrambling to keep up, while AI-generated shorts and clickbait content rack up millions of views with minimal effort or cost.
How many channels are really monetised on YouTube? Only 6 per cent
As of March 2025, YouTube had an estimated 114 million active channels. Only around 6 per cent of these are accepted into the YouTube Partner Programme (YPP), which allows monetisation. That leaves 94 per cent – over 100 million channels – unmonetised, either because they fail to meet eligibility thresholds or are inactive.
Given MrBeast’s position at the top of the platform (No. 1 on Forbes’ 2025 Top Creators list, with $85 million in earnings), his warnings carry weight. They reflect a broader anxiety: that the future of YouTube – and content creation more generally – may belong not to passionate individuals, but to cheap, fast, AI-generated noise.
