End of year retrospective
Hello all! Given that it’s the end of the year, I figured it was time for a little retrospective, and general update on the state of things.
So given the whole rebrand/takedown/switcheroo which happened, I’m quite happy with the recovery process which I’ve taken this channel through. Like I’ve said before, there was always a slight sense of unease at using Attenborough’s voice, but now that it’s all been and gone, I’m generally enjoying the whole process now a lot more. There is a certain weight off of my shoulders, and I feel like the work which I’m producing is more “mine” now, if that makes sense. Obviously it is still an AI voice though, so you’ll have to take that statement with a pinch of salt, but this all brings me to my general thoughts on AI.
I’ve always considered these tools to be nothing but a means of making certain tasks and jobs more accessible to people. Since starting this, I’ve spoken with dozens of people regarding their own AI voice work, and it’s quite interesting to hear of the different reasons as to why they chose to go down the AI path. Some people find that there is a language/accent barrier behind their own voice, or simply don’t like the way that they would narrate something, whilst others may have disabilities which prevent them from being able to speak in a way which they feel would properly represent their work. In all of these cases, it is quite clear that using an AI voice model would be beneficial to them, and I would encourage everyone to actually try using these tools at least once, just to get an idea of how they work, and of the significant limitations which exist within them. At this point I could probably spend hours lamenting on the various stances, and opinions of AI use, but for now I will simply be, and watch the year pass.
I wanted to end with just a quick reflection of the channel analytics, and I’m sure some of you might find these stats to be quite interesting. So since starting these videos in late February, as of writing this the channel has racked up around 11.7m views, with 127k subscribers, and 837,180.9 hours of watch time, which equates to 95.5 continuous years of viewing! It is rather nutty to think of that number, but for anyone who spent even a moment watching, thank you very much, it means the world to me to know that even a single person had a brief moment of entertainment from this very strange project.
In addition, I’d like to thank everyone who left any form of comment over the year, it is genuinely heart-warming to read some of your responses. I won’t recite them but there are so many comments which have stuck with me in a positive way, and I’m incredibly appreciative to each and every one of you. I’ve generally avoided the whole “please like subscribe and comment” spiel on the videos, primarily because I don’t like to break up the flow of what is meant to be a somewhat immersive listening experience. This is also part the reason why I’ve not taken any sponsorships. I have pretty negative opinions of the major sponsors which regularly pop up in most people’s videos, and I think that some of their business practices can be quite dodgy. I won’t name names, but I’ll say that there is a reason why I’ve turned down all of the offers I’ve received, and if you do see a sponsorship appear in my videos, then it’s because I don’t see them as being a predatory business. This isn’t to say that I’ll never take a sponsorship offer, but for now I’ll take the monetary hit just to keep the content fairly clean.
To round things off, I’ll say that I’m still sticking with my original plan from the whole channel nuke, in that I’ll recreate the older videos, by rewriting, and generally revamping them to a higher quality version. So far, I’ve done just over half of the planned videos, as well as some new ones, but for the coming year (not next week, probably the second week), I’ll try to alternate an old video, with a new one each week, just to keep things a bit fresher. Obviously it’s a pain to have to do this, but I know a lot of people enjoyed the old content, and it would be a shame for the work to be relegated to die a digital death.
I won’t harp on this final point too much, but again I do apologise to people who stayed for the old content with the Attenborough voice model, but it won’t be coming back. I’m very happy to move on from everything, and I’m optimistic about the future of where things will go.
And I’ll leave it all there. Once again, thank you to everyone who has watched this strange rise, fall, and revival, I hope that I provided you with some form of entertainment, or made you think about the capabilities, and possibilities of AI in a new light. With the new year will come an ever-flowing faucet of new content as per usual, and I can only hope that you’ll stick around to enjoy it.
Happy new year, and best of luck for 2024.
