One of Gaming’s Biggest YouTubers Wants to Replace Himself With AI
Jordi Van Den Bussche used to devote every waking hour to building his presence on social media. The gaming creator, better known as Kwebbelkop, would labor 24/7 on his YouTube channel coming up with video ideas, shooting them, distributing them. He did this while courting brand deals and doing the other work integral to his survival on the platform. Five years ago, he ran into a problem. “Every time I wanted to take a holiday or I needed some time for myself, I couldn't really do that, because my entire business would stop,” he says.
It’s an issue known as the “key person problem.” Without Van Den Bussche on camera, the entire Kwebbelkop enterprise didn’t work. He was too busy making videos to think about how to scale his business, and too tired to create videos. He needed a break: Around 2018, like many other YouTubers, he experienced significant burnout.
The burnout sparked a change in mindset. He began thinking about what would benefit him and what would benefit the creator industry—which often relies on milking the on-camera presence of an individual until they reach a breaking point, then finding another person seeking fame and fortune. He came up with a solution: a series of AI tools designed to create and upload videos, practically without his involvement. “I'm retired from being an influencer,” he says. “I've had a lovely career. I had a lot of fun. I want to take things to the next level. And that means making this brand live on forever.”
Van Den Bussche’s AI influencer platform, which launched this week after a suitably excitable level of hype on Twitter from its creator, is his attempt to make that happen. It comprises two versions of an AI tool. The
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