MrBeast scraps AI YouTube thumbnail generator days after announcing it: 'If creators don't want the tools, no worries'

Following a week of online criticism, world's-most-popular-YouTuber MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, has removed a new generative AI tool from his Viewstats platform, a suite of tools made to "help creators grow YouTube channels."

Available as part of an $80/month package, the AI tool promised to "generate viral thumbnails" and received some positive reactions, but also a thunderingly negative response from those who view generative AI use as wasteful, tacky, and unethical.

In a promo video announcing the tool last week (a copy of it is embedded above), Donaldson didn't dance around subjects that were likely to, and did, draw the ire of peers and fans, saying that the thumbnail generator "literally feels like cheating" and that users can "type in any channel on all of YouTube, and it will use it as inspiration for the thumbnail it's generating" while the logos of popular YouTube channels appeared above him.

"What the actual fuck... and he used my logo in the promotion for it too," said popular YouTuber Jacksepticeye in response. "I hate what this platform is turning into. Fuck AI."

On Friday, Donaldson announced that the tool is no more, saying that he'd wanted to "help small creators make better thumbnails" but "missed the mark." As a show of goodwill to critics, a directory of thumbnail artists for hire is being offered in place of the tool.

Whatever Donaldson's personal view on generative AI tools may be, he doesn't offer it up in the video, framing the change as fundamentally a response to complaints: "My goal here is to build tools to help creators, and if creators don't want the tools, no worries, it's not that big a deal."

Some creators apparently did want the AI thumbnail generator (the verified X accounts at the top of his replies, for instance), and so the rift has grown a little larger between those who see generative AI as merely a tool and those who see it as theft.

Big corporations are as divided as the public, with software companies like Google, Microsoft, and Adobe pushing AI tools while many media companies combat it. Earlier this month, for instance, Disney and Universal sued image generator Midjourney, calling it "a bottomless pit of plagiarism."