Can AI level the playing field for working-class content creators?

The dream of many content creators is to eventually have a Mr. Beast-level team who can help edit, thumbnail, and promote their content across platforms. But for many creators, in addition to creating the content in the first place, they have to do all of that work themselves.

Roberto Blake, founder of Awesome Creator Academy, knows this struggle all too well, having started his journey 21 years ago when YouTube was in its infancy. In 2016, Blake received a Silver Play Button from YouTube to celebrate reaching 100,000 subscribers. Ten years later, on stage at VidCon 2026 during the panel “How to Become a Value-First Creator: Winning with Authenticity in an AI World,” Blake had this to say about AI: “If we had these things 10 years ago, it would have been a lot easier.”

“Creators like me, who work 40 to 50 or 60 hours a week at a 9-to-5 job and are overworked and underpaid, have to figure out how to create content with what little energy they have left, what little motivation and creativity they had left over from a bad boss. That’s the reality for the vast majority of creators,” Blake said during a 30-minute panel discussion in which he was the only speaker.

Blake argued that AI is a way for these creators to succeed without a team.

How can AI help content creators today?

Blake told VidCon attendees that AI tools exist that can help creators edit videos more quickly, create video thumbnails, and resolve audio issues.

“For example, you can use something like Opusclip, and you can reuse it across all platforms and formats. You can get a landscape video. You can get a vertical video, and you can submit it instead of having to wait for an editor to come back three days later. It has everything you need and can send right away,” Blake said.

He favors 1of10 for thumbnail creation and Adobe Creative Cloud for audio modification, saying that these mixing tools allow you to salvage audio, recreate your voice, and change the recorded audio so you “don’t have to reshoot and summon the energy to get in front of the camera again.”

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Is it possible that AI will take away jobs? Roberto Blake says no.

While other panels at VidCon delved into ethnic issues surrounding the use of generative AI, Blake sidestepped the controversy and reminded the audience, “The vast majority of people don’t care how their sausage is made. They care about what it tastes like and how quickly they can eat it.”

He argued that AI in this case would not take jobs away from other creatives, as working-class content creators cannot afford professional editors. But he went on to suggest that other people can be an obstacle rather than an asset to a creator’s vision, saying, “Even if you can hire people, even if you have an unlimited budget, the reality is that sometimes we can’t always trust our creativity to others.”

he continued. “For many of us, especially those who may be introverts, our flaw isn’t that we think we can’t find someone more talented than we are. It’s that we don’t necessarily think we’ll find someone we can trust with what we put our heart and soul into, that it might not be thwarted or challenged, or that we have to defend the decisions we make creatively when we have another cook,” he continued. Sometimes these people would rather work with tools. [rather] Some are better than others, but that doesn’t disqualify the artist or mean there’s anything wrong with them. It’s just that it wasn’t a job for someone to have, and it wasn’t a relationship that would work, so that’s okay. ”

Regarding AI slop (a word he avoids rather than uses), Blake said: “Youtube has always been saturated with low-effort, low-value, low-quality content in the sense that 88 percent of long-form videos never reach 1,000 views on the platform. AI won’t necessarily change that, and it shouldn’t really discourage you.” That should mean you should understand this, and we’re fast.” He added, “I’ve never seen a purely AI-only AI channel reach 10 million subscribers on YouTube, and I don’t know if that’s going to happen anytime soon.”

After urging viewers to distance themselves from human collaboration, Blake argued that “human values” and authenticity combined with AI are the future for creators.

Roberto Blake says AI can help with energy management.

Blake reiterated the importance of creator energy in shaping online credibility and the importance of protecting that energy.

“People talk about time management and productivity. Few people talk about energy management. They don’t talk about how draining some tasks are and how mentally fulfilling others are. What if you could spend 80 percent of your time doing what you value most in the process: writing? Would you want it all to yourself?”

Mr. Blake continued. “When it comes to AI, we should think about the idea that this may not be taking anything away from us, but rather it may be giving us back time to be more human. That was sort of the point of my presentation, that if we can actually move faster, we can become more human. But it’s not the technology that’s taking away our true humanity, it’s the lack of time that we can never get back.”

To learn more about Blake’s thoughts on AI and trust, you can download a PDF of the slideshow of his presentation at Awesome Creator Academy.

Mashable is reporting live from VidCon 2026 in Anaheim. Follow our coverage of creator interviews, panel highlights, the biggest moments from the convention floor, and more.