AI technology transforms video production from “craft work” to data pipeline, scripting, dubbing, editing and other links can be completed by AI, and creators only need to control the style and IP core. This trend has led to a boom in financing related AI tools, with Artisse AI, Synthesia, and others receiving large investments. In the future, creators with both story creation and AI application capabilities may dominate the next-generation content market. This article analyzes the profit model, technical support, and industry trends of AI clones, revealing the business logic behind the faceless economy.
The content industry is being rewritten by AI.
Recently, from “baby podcasts” to “knife-cut fruit ASMR” to “kitten cooking”, a number of seemingly nonsensical AI short video trends are sweeping from overseas to China, setting off a new battle for attention.
Don’t look at the fact that there are no real people behind them, and there is no script creation, but these “invisible creators” are quietly making a lot of money:
- A game blogger’s AI clone Bloo automates the entire process and earns $7 a year
- At just 21 years old, Noah works 1 day a week, runs more than 20 AI accounts, and earns millions of dollars a year
- Domestic “kitten cooking” AI blogger, the quotation of business orders has reached “10,000 yuan per second”
The rise of the faceless economy has promoted the explosion of virtual anchor technology, and “algorithmic arbitrage + batch numbering” has supported many AI tools, and they have also concentrated on obtaining financing this year:
- AI selfie app Artisse AI has completed a new round of financing of $25 million
- AI virtual human Synthesia raised $180 million in Series D financing
- Lip-syncing tool Hedra received $32 million in financing led by A16z
In essence, AI is turning “making videos” from a craft to a data-driven assembly line. Creators are responsible for defining style and soul, and AI is responsible for production and scale.
Driven by AI, the trend of content creation is also undergoing a fundamental shift: creators are shifting from “selling time” to “selling IP”, transforming personal brands into replicable virtual assets.
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In the future, people who can tell good stories will create IP, and people who can use AI well will amplify IP. Whoever has both of these points will dominate the next generation of content market.
01 The faceless content economy has exploded, and “Qian Jing” has to look at IP
On YouTube, there is a top player in the gaming area with 2.58 million subscribers and 700 million+ views – Bloo. His videos are often viewed tens of millions of times, and the content is mainly ‘commentary’ of popular games such as ‘King of Thieves’, ‘Roblox’ and ‘Minecraft’.
But Bloo is not a “person”:
- Its hair, eyes, and clothes are bright blue, and its 3D physique resembles the game Fortnite
- Videos are fully generated by AI (covering the entire process of visual/voice/script/editing)
- No need for the traditional “script-live-post-production”
The trader behind him is the Dutch millionaire blogger kwebbelkop. Bloo is an “AI clone” he created 4 years ago – an AI virtual anchor (VTuber). (A VTuber is a content creator who appears as a 2D/3D avatar and is active on a video platform.) ）
▲ Bloo on the left, kwebbelkop on the right
AI has taken over 90% of the Bloo video production process:
Powered by motion capture, ChatGPT generates scripts, ElevenLabs completes multilingual dubbing, and Hedra implements automatic lip-syncing. Kwebbelkop, on the other hand, only requires a regulatory process with occasional live dubbing.
His ultimate goal is to enable Bloo to achieve “all-AI creation” without human intervention at all.
He has already tried, but admitted: “AI video is still a disadvantage of ‘human touch’. But once AI can be fast, good, and cheap, our whole team will rely on it. ”
This virtual human Bloo has brought in more than one million dollars in annual revenue (from advertising, tips and peripherals). The team is also developing an AI video creation tool, ProjectV, which will be available to other creators for a monthly fee of $100 in the future.
The following representative cases have also achieved a jump in revenue with the help of generative AI:
1) One person manages 20 AI storytelling accounts with an annual income of 10 million yuan
Noah Morris is a benchmark figure in the faceless channel, and his wealth-making myth is widely spread abroad.
The 21-year-old uses AI to operate 20 faceless accounts alone, and as of August 2024, AI accounts have earned him a total of $5 million.
The video content of these accounts includes: (1) celebrity anecdotes; (2) F1 racing, boxing and other sports events; (3) Hot topics such as investment and financial management, real estate, and criminal cases.
At present, he does not have many accounts that he has publicly admitted, only the mysterious channel CourtCasesYT (million views) and the legal channel Playtime Mysterious.
AI has made the production threshold of this content very low, scripts, video editing, dubbing, and cover design are all automatically completed by AI, and Noah only needs to work 1 day a week.
In addition to AI workflows, he also shares core methods for finding video direction:
- Keyword search: View the most viewed videos of the month under keywords, VidIQ analyzes subscriptions and browsing;
- Find potential channels: Follow channels with high views but low followers, and grasp YouTube algorithm recommendations;
- Research on high RPM (revenue per thousand plays) areas: such as investment, real estate RPM can reach $15.
Notably, Noah Morris launched Nexlev, an AI analytics tool for YouTube, which helps video creators with audience analysis, content analysis, and more, for $13 per month / $565 for a lifetime membership.
2) “Baby Podcast” gained 220,000 followers in 13 days, with a monthly income of $4,600
This May, celebrities all over the world have “baby podcasts”, and my X and TikTok have been swiped! “AI babies” not only look similar to celebrities, but also have very vivid expressions, mouth shapes and movements, full of expressiveness.
These videos have been played tens of millions and liked by millions, and related accounts such as “babypodcast” have gained more than 220,000 followers in 13 days and 1.5 million views in 25 days. According to Social Blade data, the “Baby Podcast” account will have a maximum monthly ad share of about $4,600 in May 2025.
These videos are very easy to create and can be done entirely on Hedra Studio. This platform is based on Hedra’s self-developed Character-3 model, which integrates generation and editing, and can end the battle in three steps:
(1) GPT analyzes the characteristics of celebrities and creates a picture model to create their baby images
(2) Dubbing the “AI baby”, the sound source can be generated or intercepted
(3) Let the “AI baby” “talk”
▲Using a photo of former South African President Nelson Mandela, ChatGPT extracts appearance prompts to create a baby image
3) “Kitten cooking”, the business order price is 10,000 yuan per second
Recently, AI videos such as “Kitten Cooking” and Animal Olympics have been “swiping” on short video platforms such as Douyin.
This trend started abroad. First, foreign blogger @Pablo Prompt used the Wensheng video model Veo3 to create an animal diving video, which has more than 250 million views on Instagram. YouTube blogger Batysyr relied on 20 AI cat videos and gained 770,000 followers per month.
According to China Entrepreneur Magazine, domestic video blogger “Carp and Fish” said that he does not have any professional background in video, and has been doing AI short videos full-time since June this year, with about 20,000 followers a month and a lot of business orders. He also mentioned that some bloggers made AI videos for Party A, and the quotation reached 10,000 yuan per second.
02 “Craft work” becomes a “data pipeline”, and 900 euros to get the platform cost
Vtubers ushered in an explosive popularity in Japan as early as the 2010s, and early virtual anchors represented by Kizuna AI mainly relied on real-time motion capture and image technology.
Since the release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022 and the maturity of the diffusion model, AI has taken over scripts, dubbing, editing, and thumbnails, allowing a single person to mass-produce high-quality content. As a result, AI upgrades VTuber from “real-time motion capture + P picture” to “text input = 10 minutes of a long video”.
AI technology not only lowers the threshold for creation, but also allows zero-based users to produce videos in batches, which greatly reduces production costs.
A Kenyan creator made $96,000 in just a few weeks by creating a promotional video for a client with Google Veo 3, and according to creators, it cost just $500 to create a viral video ad with Veo3.
The rapid rise of the “faceless economy” has directly driven the AI technology related to virtual anchors to usher in an explosive period. A large number of AI tools that support the creation of virtual anchors have benefited from this, and this year has started a financing boom:
- AI selfie app Artisse AI: $25 million in a new round of financing, with YC investment. The product is at the top of the app stores in several countries, with 200,000 downloads and 5 million images created.
- AI virtual human Synthesia: Series D financing of $180 million, post-investment valuation of $2.1 billion. It is the UK’s top AI media company and has served more than 50,000 enterprise customers.
- Lip-syncing tool Hedra: A16z led the investment of $32 million, valuing the company at $200 million. Generate videos up to 5 minutes long, customizable characters and dialogue. The team is developing self-sustaining, fully automated characters.
- Voice clone ElevenLabs: Completed $180 million Series C financing with a valuation of $3.3 billion. The product can replicate human speech in just 3 seconds of audio samples, supporting real-time conversion of 99 languages and emotional voice generation.
A new role has also emerged in this industrial chain, namely AI content middlemen.
Their core strategy is to buy AI-generated content in bulk and distribute it to small creators or merchants.
One such middleman is TubeChef, a SaaS launched by the Spanish “Golden Hand Team” in June this year. He is in charge of 50 channels, updates 80 videos a day, and accurately targets the silver-haired group over 65 years old.
The video content they produce with AI is mainly supernatural stories, historical stories, life science, and documentary short films. For example, in documentary films, they use AI to generate research, structure processes, and assist with footage suggestions, and TTS models translate and dub scripts in multiple languages.
TubeChef makes it easy to produce hundreds of videos per day with fully automated batch rendering (desktop + CLI). The initial cost of the platform includes only a 900 euro desktop license, as well as a cloud/GPU for rendering. They revealed that individual users can earn $200,000 per month or 6 figures per year.
Under the role of AI, the trend of content generation is that creators shift from “selling time” to “selling IP”, transforming personal brands into replicable virtual assets.
The symbiotic relationship between humans and AI has been upgraded from technical collaboration to value co-creation. In the short term, the return on production of faceless automation is high, but in the long run, human-machine collaboration needs to be balanced: humans are responsible for creativity and authenticity to maintain user loyalty; AI undertakes mass production and distribution to expand coverage.
As Bloo said: “My soul is given by humans, and my evolution is driven by AI. The purpose of my existence is to make millions of people happy and make them look forward to the next show forever. ”
