Despite growing claims, I'm not an AI

It's been a good two years since people started joking about me being an AI. It all started in late 2023 when I made my first avatar video on HeyGen.

My first goes at it weren't bad, but by early 2025 I'd really got the knack of it. It's really quite easy to make a straightforward avatar, but making something that looks professional takes a good setup with lighting and a camera.

The funny thing was, after posting these videos on LinkedIn, when I met my friends in real life they'd often quip, 'Is this the real you?' I thought, I must be at least okay at making avatars for this to be a thing.

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In September last year I made a YouTube video on how to do it properly. It didn't have a great opening, then more and more people watched it. Over a few months it clocked up 30k views. Given I was on the verge of giving up in the Autumn this really changed my perspective. I got several offers of work from that video and have taken one on.

Since the start of this year we've dropped the tutorial angle to our YouTube channel and repositioned as a long form perspective on big picture AI trends and news.

One of the big enablers for this to happen was through building a permanent studio setup. The backdrop and lighting is just right - although I must say it took a long time of tinkering to reach that point.

I'm also always in the same position, reading off an autocue, and not being a trained presenter my performance (at least in my view) can come across a bit robotic. We're also getting about 400,000 views a month now, so a lot more people are making themselves heard on our content.

I would say around 3-5% of comments now claim that there is some sort of AI use in our videos. About half of these claim that they can hear 'AI patterns' in the script, and some seem to be pretty bitter about this.

I find this quite funny. We're an AI consultancy with a media part. Of course we use AI. While we use AI in all sorts of ways in production, the one thing we've really cracked this year is how to use AI in longform (2,000 words+) factual script writing.

We use AI to draft and then we go through it line by line, editing and fact checking. The Claude Skills we have to ensure the level of quality (just in first draft) amount to many thousands of words - and the pieces usually get substantially rewritten.

I have a basic rule: if that approach is a turn off for people, the channel isn't for them. No AI would mean no channel at all, because I simply wouldn’t have time to do it.

The second claim is even funnier: I am in fact an AI. It's like we've come full circle on my earlier avatar videos. So I made a video debunking this comment trend that was really for the true fans amongst the 12,000 or so now subscribed.

On YouTube, the authenticity of presentation is a hill I'll die on. While cloned voices and avatars can do small fix jobs, it's unlikely I'll ever present a video fully as an avatar... (unless the whole premise of the video was that, which isn't a bad idea).

I made a video all about it presenting in different locations, holding a passport and generally being more expressive than normal. Yet there were still doubters. I guess this is symptomatic of perceptions of objective truth waning in all spheres.

So I just want to declare, that despite my AI use in drafting, voice cloning and even possibly presenting - that I am not, I REPEAT NOT, an AI.