Spotter, a startup that provides financial solutions to content creators, announced the release of a new AI-powered creative suite on Tuesday. Called Spotter Studio, the solution aims to support YouTubers throughout the entire creative process, including brainstorming video concepts, generating ideas for thumbnails and titles, planning projects, organizing tasks, and collaborating with their team.
Most notably, it has the ability to analyze billions of public YouTube videos to get inspiration from similar creators.
Spotter Studio competes with a range of AI tools designed for creators, including TubeBuddy and VidIQ, as well as YouTube's AI-powered inspiration tool, which suggests topics based on data about the content viewers are currently watching. However, Spotter Studio claims that what sets it apart is that its solution is customized to individual preferences.
When creators sign up for Spotter Studio, they give the company access to all of their public YouTube videos. The company uses these videos to provide custom suggestions that will resonate with viewers. The company says that users' personalized suggestions are not shared with other users.
“We look at every video you’ve ever made and we know what really worked and what didn’t,” Spotter founder and CEO Aaron DeBevoise explained to TechCrunch. “We combine that data with performance data across your channel to make recommendations that are tailored to you. [when] You have four creatives, and even if they all put forward the same idea, they will all get different results based on their individual personalities.”
Image credit: Spotter
Spotter's “brainstorming” feature generates ideas based on a creator's prompt and their past creations, and also has override options to further customize the results. For example, there's an option to describe the target audience – so if the majority of their audience is male, creators can ask for ideas targeted at women or non-binary users.
There is also a “Diversify” button that users can click to branch out into new and related different ideas. For example, if the topic is basketball, it can generate ideas like collaborations with basketball players, basketball tournaments, personal stories related to basketball, etc.
The thumbnail tool is also customized for each creator, taking the creator's profile picture and using their likeness to generate concept art for the thumbnail.
Moreover, Spotter Studio's “Projects” tool serves as an all-in-one project planner for you to organize tasks and collaborate with your team. It also tracks your project through various stages, including in development, post-production, ready to publish, and published.
Image credit: Kinigra Deon case study from Spotter (image has been modified)
Interestingly, the AI analyzes over 2 billion popular videos made by similar creators on YouTube and suggests ways for Spotter users to promote their own videos. The feature, called “Outliers,” acts as a “research co-pilot” and fetches videos from other YouTubers that the creator's audience is also watching. Once a user clicks on a title, Spotter's AI tool will brainstorm channel ideas.
The act of analyzing popular videos on YouTube can raise concerns about originality and creativity. Plagiarism is a big issue among YouTubers, with many trying to put out as many videos as possible in an attempt to gain as many followers as quickly as possible. Last year, Harris Brewis (aka hbomberguy) accused several YouTubers of plagiarism. One of those accused was James Somerton, who allegedly quoted without properly attributing citations to the authors, then reconstructed words to present them as his own.
When we spoke with Spotter's EVP of product, Paul Bakaus, we mentioned that the outliers feature could be controversial among some creators. He told TechCrunch: “Creators are already [copying] Every day that ship has sailed… that’s probably not the best response.”
While that was an unexpected response from an executive, he was unfortunately right: Copying what's already successful has been around for decades and isn't likely to stop. Furthermore, while YouTube videos themselves are protected by copyright, the ideas and concepts underlying them are not.
Bakaus claims the system won't generate ideas that directly rip off someone else's video, but launching an AI tool that replicates what many creators worry is a bad idea.
“We've been very careful in brainstorming and its underlying functionality to not copy actual videos, so when you click on the brainstorm icon on one of these buttons, the video idea that you see is not the exact video that you clicked on. Right now, we're only using the title as inspiration and we make sure that it's always very personalized,” he added.
Image credit: Spotter Studio
Spotter has been developing its AI tool for about a year and has invited several creators to test it, including Colin & Samir, Dude Perfect, Kinigra Deon, MrBeast, and Rebecca Zamolo. Early beta tests have seen an average 49% increase in views in the first week compared to videos created without Spotter Studio, the startup claims.
The company says its suite of AI tools will continue to evolve, with Spotter Studio adding new features every week while improving existing ones. Spotter is also introducing experimental features through its AI division, Spotter Labs, including a “Story Beats” tool that helps with outlining content.
Spotter Studio is currently available in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia for $49 per month. The company is currently offering a limited-time discount of $299 per year, and there's also a 30-day free trial.