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It's Monday and we hope you're recovering handily from the holiday food coma. Logan Paul is starting his 2026 by finally auctioning off the "holy grail" $5.3 million Pokémon card he's worn around his neck since 2022. |
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Today's News |
❌ FaZe Clan loses most of its roster 🤖 Google is turning YouTubers into bots 💰 TikTok's $10K offer 📺 Airrack wants to buy Punk'd
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FAZE QUIT |
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FaZe Clan just lost most of its creator roster, including COO FaZe Apex |
The mass walkout: FaZe Clan had quite the Christmas. On the merriest day of the year, a sizable chunk of its creator roster unceremoniously—and publicly—quit. FaZe Adapt, JasonTheWeen, Lacy, StableRonaldo, YourRage, Kaysan, and Silky all tweeted some variation of "Left @FaZeClan," and most didn't give details. |
But, in the days since their exit, reports have surfaced indicating they left over disagreements with FaZe's current leadership--namely Matt Kalish, the DraftKings co-founder who invested $11 million in FaZe Clan and took a 49% stake in its media half (separate from esports) as the org tried to recover from its disastrous IPO. |
You may remember that Kalish recently announced the launch of HardScope, a company he said would help creators build "empires." Exactly how it will do that remains to be seen, but the general gist is that HardScope wants to get creators brand deals focused on advertising to Gen Z. |
The deal: FaZe's creators reportedly spent the last six months in negotiations with Kalish, who wanted them to sign new agreements with HardScope. But creators didn't feel the terms offered were in their best interest—so they walked. |
| ❝ | | | "[L]eadership shifted in a way that made it difficult for me to get involved again…I always intended to see it through to the end and do what I could to help the brand succeed, and it's finally time to close this chapter. I have a lot of love for everyone who helped build FaZe, especially the OGs early on, and I wish I had been able to do more to keep things together over the years." | | | | - COO FaZe Apex, who left Dec. 27 |
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In a statement to Bloomberg, Kalish dismissed creators' concerns, saying they are "good kids" who "have a lot of people in their ear and are confused." He added that FaZe Clan's current financial situation is "unsustainable," but he plans to move forward with the org and with HardScope. |
The future: There's no way to say what might come next. It's possible we're looking at the end of FaZe Clan here, whether because of its gutted roster or because of its finances. |
Either way, FaZe creators' mass exit echoes what happened earlier this year with VTuber org VShojo, and shows that creators are increasingly willing to strike out on their own if they don't think an organization has their best interests at heart. |
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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰 |
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CREATOR BOTS |
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Google wants to make creator chatbots. What could go wrong? |
The bots: Google is keeping its eye on the potential LLM bubble burst. Despite that, though, it—like pretty much every other major tech company—continues pouring cash into generative AI, rolling out new tools for creators and marketers in hopes of achieving eventual profit. |
The latest tool, though, is for fans. Called Portraits, it's what Google says is an "experimental feature" that "lets viewers conversationally interact with AI representations of participating creators and gives these creators insights into topics that their audiences are interested in." |
Basically, if you really like [insert creator's name here], Google is banking on you maybe wanting to talk to a fake version of them. |
The context: The issue is, this type of product has historically not gone very well. Back in 2023, Amouranth partnered with a company called Forever Voices AI to launch her own AI chatbot with extra parasocial flavor. Around the same time, Snapchatter Caryn Marjorie put out her own bot. Both ended up shut down—Marjorie's after she got death threats and had issues with the bot getting a little too spicy, and Amouranth's after Forever Voices' CEO was arrested for alleged attempted arson. |
Independent companies aren't the only ones that have taken stabs at this. In 2023, Meta, scrambling for the next bandwagon after its womp-womp metaverse pivot, got into the game too. Its plan looked a lot like Google's—it even did a deal with MrBeast to use his likeness. But instead of letting users talk to MrBeast "himself," said likeness was overlaid onto a bot named "Zach," which Meta described as a too-cool-for-you older brother figure that dished out sick burns and always had a fresh joke on the tip of its tongue. |
People were decidedly not into it, and Meta axed all the bots less than a year later, citing low user engagement. |
To date, we haven't seen creator avatars launch with any sort of staying power. |
The approach: Google is setting itself up for more potential success than Meta, simply because it's making fake versions of real creators, rather than trying to paste creators' faces onto unrelated chatbots. Portraits will appear on creators' channels, looking and sounding like the creator, and will prompt viewers to talk with them. |
But do viewers actually want that? |
As eMarketer recently reported, more than half of U.S. adults are unlikely to interact with AI-generated influencers. On top of that, 32% of consumers think gen AI had a negatively disrupting effect on the creator economy in 2025, per Billion Dollar Boy. |
Appealing to parasocial appetites might give YouTube a bump in the short term, but it's human creators who have carried the platform from its earliest days to two full decades of being the single biggest video destination on the internet. Those creators and their viewers are closer than ever these days—so will fans really settle for a digital pull-string doll? |
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WATCH THIS 📺 |
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Airrack wants to revive an MTV classic |
The OG: Hey you! Yes you! Do you own the rights to the iconic MTV show Punk'd? Well, Airrack wants to talk. |
In his latest guest star spot on creator/industry vet Jon Youshaei's YouTube channel, Airrack—whose passion for a good prank has helped attract an audience of nearly 18 million subscribers—says he is on the hunt to revive Punk'd for its next era. |
The creator with over 17 million subscribers was on Youshaei's channel to talk about one of his biggest-effort prank videos, where he had KSI and other top streamers fake arrested (to the tune of 5 million views). He also has a loosely connected series of prank videos he's calling Get Got!—but what he really wants is to bring back the show that started it all. |
He was so inspired that he rang up Punk'd's co-creator, producer, and host Ashton Kutcher and asked if he could buy the rights to the brand. Unfortunately, Kutcher's response was that he no longer controls said rights. |
You may remember that Punk'd already got a YouTube makeover last year. That iteration, called Punk You, featured a roster of rotating content creator hosts, but didn't seem to take off. And Airrack's not deterred—by that or the rights issue. He wrapped his time with Youshaei by asking whoever does control the rights to hit him up for a chat. |
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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, James Hale, and Josh Cohen. |
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