thank you for this explanation! I was wondering what was going on. YT needs to do something about these bots, it's cringe & ridiculous seeing them used to attack people/spam comments. Thank you for the truth. Godspeed.
5 months ago | 62
Hello Fern. Ive seen the channel take a lot of parts from my videos too and after a fan pointed out they stole some parts of my video I have requested a copyright takedown now which YouTube now gives Meld 7 days time to take their latest video down. You're a big inspiration for me too and these AI stealing channels shouldn't get away with it
5 months ago | 20
It's always the least creative who get angry the quickest. It's like that one classmate you get partnered with: They make you do all the real work for researching and assembling it, and then they botch their part of the presentation. Then they blame you when you finally call them out. 🙄
5 months ago (edited) | 72
Dead internet theory is real (it's not but i find the fact of people wasting money on random bots and sloppy AI sad, these people are unable to even force themselfs to be creative at all)
5 months ago | 49
I usually see bot comments trying to advertise adult websites. It's crazy seeing them weaponized in an attempt to ruin a decent person's credibility
5 months ago | 21
Make a video exposing him and see if he copies that too :p
5 months ago | 34
This is what worries me. I’m doing interviews, pulling records, and all that but I’m a one man operation. If a big AI channel steals something I would just be screwed. Glad you guys have the means to fight this.
5 months ago | 1
Fern, we would never doubt you. Your development over the last few years has been visible and you have improved quite a lot. You are not some ai machine that repeats itself over and over again. No. You are people like us who are the best of the best. We will always be there for you🤩
5 months ago | 3
That's why you should learn the concept of honey pot. Put some fake tidbit in your vids and when copied, sue the person to oblivion...
5 months ago | 1
This channel is a masterpiece. 73 videos and 3.3 million subscribers, that just shows how much effort goes into these videos. Keep up the good work.
4 months ago | 0
Still wonder why YouTube lets those AI generated channels exist for more than a week.
5 months ago | 10
Fern - could be worth reaching out to the South Park YouTuber called Bloons. They too recently dealt with something like this and DESTROYED the AI copycat. Could even be the same group. Go look at Bloons video from about a month ago, you'll find it insightful.
5 months ago | 8
I had no idea that this was happening. How shameless of them, thieves. I have never seen any of those channels, because I am picky about my sources. I only trust Fern 🍀 Also, your recent video animation is stunning, I am always amazed by the quality of these documentaries. Big fan . Love you guys
5 months ago | 0
fern
Hey, long read below:
We want to share a bizarre story around our latest upload: "The Most Genius Cannabis Scam Ever"
A lot of people are wondering if we stole this video and thumbnail from "meld". Of course we didn't.
They stole most of our original (German speaking) video from 2023: https://youtu.be/cFbD6QKNj4s?si=ra6Yr...
They also took one of our previous thumbnails (from a fern video) and adapted it slightly: https://youtu.be/WyQ7z8BMwwk?si=T0bNf...
Their voice over is a pitched up AI version of ours.
We took the liberty to make clear who actually researched, ideated and animated this content. Also since our original German video came out there have been interesting developments in the case (which meld did not cover, as they simply stole our old video).
In a bizarre twist, meld is now claiming to be an ex-fern employee under his video. That is obviously a blatant lie. There are several German language sections in his video, which demonstrates this person did not have access to our project files at any point. Also his English is quite bad and he clearly does not speak German. He accidentally thanked interview partners (with partly mistranslated names) in his copied video description, who we personally interviewed two years ago.
In an even more ridiculous twist, our video is now overrun by cheap bots (joined YT 1-2 months ago, attractive women as profile pics, random male names), claiming we stole our content from meld. We've been on YouTube for a decade and this has to be the wildest cope we ever witnessed.
Anyways - hope you enjoy the video!
TL;DR: Some AI garbage artist can't handle being called out.
5 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 2,369