TOGETHER WITH

It’s Thursday and if regular human interaction isn’t cutting it anymore, why not give ChatGPT a ring? Thanks to OpenAI, members of the lonely hearts club can now talk to the bot on the phone for 15 minutes a month.

Today’s News

MAFIA BOSS

Kai Cenat got more watch time in 2024 than the next two most-watched streamers combined

The ranking: Streams Charts’ ranking of the most-watched streamers of 2024 has arrived. In first place: Kai Cenat with 184.5 million hours of annual watch time across Twitch and Rumble.

The 23-year-old Bronx native scored the #1 spot by a wide margin, generating more than twice as much watch time as the #2 finisher (aka Rainbow Six Siege streamer Jynxzi). Jynxzi and the #3 streamer, xQc, together accumulated more than 152 million hours of watch time in 2024—a combined total that still falls more than 30 million hours short of Cenat’s individual haul.

The context: Cenat’s impressive view count is the culmination of a year of hard work and savvy collabs. Even before shattering records with his 30-day Mafiathon II event in November, the streamer reeled in views with guest stars like Kevin Hart and pop culture-fueled events like his ballyhooed Elden Ring marathon. A wide-ranging roster of brand partners—including Nike, McDonald’s, T-Mobile, and the NBA—added to Cenat’s prominence in 2024. As he heads into the new year, the streamer seems poised to maintain that momentum by growing his YouTube channel and producing some ambitious live events.

The political impact: Beyond demonstrating Cenat’s mounting popularity in 2024, Streams Charts’ ranking also demonstrates the rising influence of streamers who have ventured into the world of political commentary. Left-wing firebrand Hasan Piker and controversial lightning rod Asmongold both made it into the top ten, with the former creator reaching fifth place with 67.2 million hours of watch time and the latter’s zackrawrr channel claiming a spot at #6 (with 58.1 million hours of watch time).

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

Introducing Opus Clip’s Editor 2.0: A faster, easier way to create viral Shorts, Reels, and TikToks

Last year, creator economy experts and engineers joined forces to transform the world of online video. Their industry-disrupting invention: OpusClip. 

Since debuting as the world's #1 AI video clipping platform, OpusClip has helped 6M+ creators and brands create viral Shorts, TikToks, and Reels with a single click.

Now, OpusClip’s Editor 2.0 has arrived—with faster rendering, manual capabilities, and more captioning options than ever before:

1. Create viral clips in seconds ⏰
From uploading original videos to exporting clips directly to Adobe Premiere Pro, Editor 2.0 provides a smoother, quicker editing experience. 

2. Generate B-rolls optimized for high engagement ✅
Generate and customize contextually relevant B-rolls in seconds by simply highlighting the text you want to add Broll to and just like magic, the AI will have stock footage or a generated moving image added to the video in seconds!

3. Add and remove personalized captions with ease ✍️
Editor 2.0 makes captioning your videos easier, faster, and more customizable. With the tap of a button, you can cut filler words, remove pauses, add new text and emojis, and even update the caption style from OpusClip’s collection of 12+ trending templates.

Creators are already seeing incredible results, from 70% higher revenue (Ebonie Dion) to 65% more subscribers (Ricardo Hernandez). Hit the link below to see how it works for yourself:

Start creating with OpusClip →

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Kia is introducing a new creator-led campaign that lets people build their ideal car directly on TikTok (as long as it’s a 2025 Kia K4, of course). (Tubefilter)
  
  

• In other TikTok news, the Supreme Court has granted the platform’s request for a hearing that could decide the fate of the U.S.’s “ban-or-divest” law. (Gizmodo)
  
  

• Threads plans to introduce a new feature that will allow users to repost photos or videos “with attribution to the original poster.” (Threads)
  ​

• Want one last look at 2024? Here’s a recap of all the annual recaps you might have missed from Spotify, Steam, Nintendo, and more. (The Verge)

THE BIZ

Ludwig says Offbrand “failed” to make the creator events business “sustainable”

The announcement: When Ludwig Ahgren and business partners Nick Allen, Nathan Stanz, and Brandon Ewing launched Offbrand in 2022, they planned to work with top creators to produce spectacular events.

That’s no longer the case. Just two years after Offbrand’s debut, the studio has revealed its “difficult decision to shut that side of the business down” as it shifts to focus operations on video game publishing. Employees who worked on the events side of Offbrand will receive two months of severance. One notable team member has already departed; Ahgren confirmed that Jerma—the innovative streamer who joined Offbrand in 2023—left the company about six months ago due to personal reasons. 

The factors: In a recent video, Ahgren outlined the accounting and financial factors that contributed to the demise of Offbrand’s events businesses. But the main problem, he explained, wasn’t a lack of profitability: it was the massive amount of effort required to produce even a single event.

Ahgren also cited a “general shift” in creator attitudes that made Offbrand-style events less of a priority. Instead of investing in large-scale productions, top streamers like Kai Cenat built hype by hosting more intimate events—like subathons—that maximize chat interactions at the expense of blockbuster thrills (Mafiathon being a prime example).

Next steps: Fans of Ahgren won’t have to say goodbye to his signature game show-style productions altogether. Many of the events Offbrand produced went live on Ahgren’s channel, and the streamer will continue to put on special productions for his followers. Meanwhile, Offbrand will pivot to center its publishing unit, which got off to a hot start when its first title rose to the top of the Steam charts.

FAKE OUT

YouTube and CAA want to make sure creators are safe from deepfakes

The partnership: Over the summer, YouTube announced that it would begin removing AI-generated content that realistically simulated a person’s face or voice—if that person asked it to. Now, the platform is taking things one step further.

As part of a new partnership with Creative Artists Agency (CAA), YouTube will help develop a detection system to seek out deepfake content of celebrities and content creators so they can request removals. That collaboration isn’t typical for the platform—YouTube rarely works with talent management companies and agencies on this kind of venture—but in this case, it says partnering with CAA gives it access to “several of the world’s most influential figures,” including “award-winning actors and top athletes from the NBA and NFL.” Those kinds of celebrities—who have countless hours of video footage of themselves online that can now be scraped and fed to software—are particularly at risk of deepfake attacks.

The process: To begin combatting that problem, YouTube says CAA’s participating clients will have access to “early-stage technology designed to identify and manage AI-generated content that features their likeness, including their face, on YouTube at scale.” The platform also aims to provide “easy access” to submit takedown requests when its tool finds deepfaked material. (Those takedowns are unlikely to result in strikes for the uploaders, since YouTube is allowing individuals to decide whether they’ll allow deepfakes of themselves on the platform.)

Celebrities will provide feedback to YouTube while it’s building the tool, and then will be the first to use the live version when it rolls out in early 2025. Following that refinement process, the platforms says it plans to release the tool “to a wider group of creators and artists,” including “top YouTube creators, creator professionals, and other leading partners representing talent.”

WATCH THIS 📺

Skibidi Toilet just made its Fortnite debut

The collaboration: That’s right: Skibidi Toilet has officially dropped into Fortnite. The Gen A-fueled YouTube sensation made its debut in the game earlier this week, with the addition of some snazzy new cosmetics to the Item Shop. Thanks to that collab, players willing to flush away a few hundred or thousand V-Bucks can now sport sentient toilet-heads on their backs and enter the fray in shiny new Plunger Cameraman skins. (Check out the goods in this trailer.)

Is it an unexpected collab? Maybe—but with a Michael Bay movie in the works and a lifetime total of over 18 billion YouTube views, we’re not surprised to see Skibidi enter a new category of Gen A entertainment.

Want to introduce your brand to Tubefilter’s audience? Sponsor the newsletter.

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.​

Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.