It’s Thursday and a spicy new Substack tool reveals which creators have been using AI to write their content.

GAME ON

The update: Roblox owes much of its success to the independent video game developers that use its game creation engine, Roblox Studio, to make and publish titles. Now, the platform is lowering the barrier to entry for aspiring game devs with the release of Build, a “new mobile-first creation tab” designed to let anyone “build without limits.”

With Build, Roblox said it’s “taking that original idea” of users creating their own games “further than we ever have”—but the tab itself isn’t exactly an original concept. Like many other vibe coding applications that have appeared over the last year or so, Build turns ChatGPT-style text prompts into “a basic game” by automatically generating “a starting point for the creator to iterate on, playtest, and share with friends or publish.”

According to Roblox, the tab will launch for testing on July 28.

The reasoning: In an X post, Roblox Corporation CEO David Baszucki explained that “the one reason” Roblox is adding AI is because “[t]he world needs more play.”  At the end of the day, however, this update will likely force Roblox game developers to compete with a deluge of low-quality, low-effort content.

Build isn’t the only “agentic” tool on Roblox’s horizon, either. The platform said that, in the coming months, it will “share a series of announcements that will give every creator a clear runway to go further.”

PLATFORM UPDATES

The update: Like most platforms, Twitch already prevents anyone under the age of 13 from making an account. As more and more nations seek to ban teens from social media, however, the platform is going one step further by releasing a parental control that could keep minors from going live altogether.

Instead of blanket allowing anyone over 13 to stream (as most platforms do once users are out of range of COPPA), Twitch is giving parents the option to prevent their 13-to-17-year-olds from going live.

Parents can also choose to disable Whispers (Twitch’s private DM system), set watch time limits, and disable content in specific categories (like gambling and mature-rated games) from appearing in search results and recommended material. They’ll also get a weekly report detailing how many hours their kids tuned in for and on which channels.

Once a user turns 18, their parent will automatically be booted out.

The context: These parental controls are similar to what YouTube already offers. The main difference is that Twitch now lets parents choose if their kids become content creators.

That distinction presents something of an ethical quandary. With Twitch’s new controls, parents can keep their kids from becoming streamers—and yet, kids have no legal recompense if their parents upload content of them on the internet. A mother can prevent her 15-year-old from going live on Twitch, but there’s nothing an eight-year-old can do to stop their mom from filming them every day for vlogs.

As more regulations emerge to control kids’ participation on social media, it’s worth considering what extrapolating this idea could mean for thousands of creators who make money by putting their kids online.

SOUND OF MUSIC

The makeover: Last December, Spotify announced the launch of music videos, which were originally exclusive to the platform’s Premium subscribers. Fast forward to this week, and music videos are getting a glow-up. 

Musicians can now upload full-length music videos directly to Spotify via the Spotify for Artists hub. The platform will then distribute them to consumers through a variety of recently-developed features. A Videos For You shelf offers Spotify’s first personalized set of music video recs, and artists can petition the platform to get their clips included in themed playlists like Best New Videos and Live Performances.

At the top of Spotify’s music video pyramid is Music Video Charts Global, a top-ten ranking that honors the most popular music videos of each week and gives us flashbacks to MTV’s TRL.

The stats: YouTube has a music video chart of its own, and has cited that ranking when determining the hottest trends on its platform. Spotify’s push into music videos (and video podcasts) can be understood as an attempt to challenge YouTube in the realm of audiovisual content.

To do that, Spotify needs creators to know they can benefit from bigger music video libraries—because in order for videos to pay dividends and show up on global charts, artists have to actually upload them.

According to data shared by Spotify, users who watch a music video go on to listen to the corresponding song 64% more often over the next three weeks. Those users are 1.4x more likely to save the song, share it, or add it to a playlist, and artists enjoy an overall bump of 57% across their catalog from users who stream their music videos.

WATCH THIS 👀

The trailers: Screen Junkies has now given two YouTuber-made films the “Honest Trailers” treatment back-to-back. It’s an industry milestone fit for 2026, and we aren’t mad at it.

Two weeks after offering its satirical take on Obsession, Screen Junkies has released its trailer for Backrooms. The result is a tongue-in-cheek deep-dive into the film (spoilers and all), plus a peek at Kane Parson’s OG videos and The Backrooms’ origins as a 4chan thread.

Check out the full trailer here.

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