Adobe's ToS Snafu

Adobe was eyeing to use your content for their AI and the world was not having it!

The world threw up on Adobe for their terms of service update that appeared to give a carte blanche for the company to scan, look at, and review any content that passes through Adobe software or the Adobe cloud. A few days after Internet outrage almost canceled them, Adobe has promised to release a new terms of service update that assures customers that they will not train AI systems on customer data. 

Before this, Microsoft boldly announced a co-pilot that would take screenshots of your laptop screen continuously to help you “recall” anything you’ve seen before. Should we have perfect recall on our digital memories?

Is AI about to make Blackmirror episodes a reality? If you are not already sick of hearing about it, you will be soon.

YouTube’s Dream Screen: More pointless garbage that YouTube insists on adding…

Let’s face it, YouTube creation tools have always sucked. In an attempt to suck a little less, YouTube is adding AI-based green screen capabilities for Shorts. Wait, no, that sucks all the same.

The Reddit verse has colorful comments to describe this move - “more BS garbage”, “dogshit”, “destroying”, “annoying”, “unoriginal trash content”, to quote some.

All that said, this is just the beginning. While YouTube may not exactly be bringing your most important creative AI tools, several others are building for it and will soon create huge leaps in productivity for creators.

There is a lot of threat to creativity suggesting that AI will do it all - make music, write scripts, create videos, and so on. Surely, we don’t want AI to replace our creativity, leaving us to deal with the mundane aspects of life! The most interesting AI tools are going to be those that reduce repetitive and cumbersome tasks, allowing you to focus more on your creativity! 

Shameless Plug: At Rizzle, we’re building your video co-pilot to make editing less cumbersome. Create Teasers, Highlights, Clips, and Custom Thumbnails in less than 30 minutes with premium stock media, maps, and b-rolls.

Creator Spotlight: H3 Podcast

If you're a dedicated podcast fan, you've likely come across the H3 Podcast, a show hosted by the dynamic duo of Ethan and Hila Klein. Their on-air partnership is a potent mix of edgy humor and unapologetic opinions, often sparking heated debates online. This resulted in the couple carving a niche for themselves online. They began their journey on YouTube, initially hosting the H3 Podcast there, then streaming on Twitch before returning to YouTube again.

The channel now has 2.8 million subscribers. It has produced over 1.2 million videos, garnering 1.32 billion views.

The hosts smoothly switch from light-hearted topics to intense political debates. Ethan's mix of humor and sharp insights has attracted a large audience and dedicated fans.

And guess what? Just like Lex Fridman and Joe Rogan we covered in the last two editions of this newsletter, H3 also creates highlights and clips from their podcasts. In Episode #106, Ethan catches up with an old co-host and chats about mental health. By creating five clips from that one video, they generated a whopping additional 611K views!

A number of people create Shorts from long-form videos. The narrative about creating short vertical videos from longer horizontal videos is everywhere - as if the main missing components are Shorts and TikTok. They’re important, but the key thing that’s going to double or triple your monetization is creating highlights and clips from longer videos to multiply engagement on traditional YouTube.

If you are not creating shorter highlights and clips from your longer videos, you’re missing out! Learn more about how top YouTubers maximize their engagement. 

In other news…

• Instagram is testing unskippable ads. The platform already makes more money than YouTube and TikTok while sharing zero of its ad dollars to creators. No one is happy about unskippable ads!

• Creator blockout is the new deal every major creator has inadvertently signed up for. It has now become routine for audiences to pressure creators into talking about topics like Gaza and labeling those who don’t as being insensitive toward the death of Palestinians.

• Sony is making the first move in acknowledging that they will use AI to cut film costs. You know the rest of Hollywood is no exception - but who will be the winners and losers in this AI-assisted world? We’ll dive deeper in our next edition.

• Reddit is licensing user-generated content to train AI systems all over - OpenAI was the most recent addition. Reddit has already made over $200M in licensing. The real black mirror tragedy will be when AI starts writing Reddit posts.

• Subscribers can now receive videos via Substack chat. If you were ever holding out on Substack chat, now’s a good time to jump in!

• Twitch revealed plans to raise subscription prices in 30 countries starting July 11th - and this is not good news for creators.