YouTuber Hank Green apologizes for AI chatbot use, plans to slow down

Hank Green, who has 3.2 million subscribers on YouTube, has publicly apologized for his increasing reliance on AI chatbots. The controversy began when he used the phrase "I appreciate the pushback" in a video for the educational channel Complexly, prompting viewers to suspect that a chatbot had written part of the script and that the line was an accidental inclusion of a response to a prompt.

In a deleted post on X, Green acknowledged that he produced the video "under a ton of pressure" and used ChatGPT "for research on this script," but insisted the "pushback" line was actually addressed to the episode's guest. Later, in a more detailed apology on Reddit, he said he was "mortified" and felt he had "let so many people down," and that he plans to reduce his video production. Green stated that he has only used ChatGPT to "locate papers and other resources for learning about topics," and that the words and opinions have remained his own. He accepted that critics were right to accuse him of "diluting" himself. He also clarified that he is "not a pure AI-hater," while expressing concerns about AI's impact on climate change and the speed at which tech companies are attempting to consolidate economic power.

"Ultimately, what I am most scared of is ruining myself for people, but I have not been managing my impulses well," he wrote, adding that he wants to guarantee that his words are his own. To address the situation, Green said he will pause or post less frequently across his YouTube channels. He wants to focus on more meditative work, like a recent video where "the writing was the whole thing," and also make "dumb unscripted straight to camera thoughts." He admitted that the dopamine he gets from interacting with LLMs has become "not healthy for me or good for the world," calling it careless and disconnecting him from people.