Spotter launches AI tools to help YouTubers brainstorm video ideas, thumbnails and more

Spotter, the startup that provides financial solutions to content creators, announced Tuesday the launch of its new AI-powered creative suite. Dubbed Spotter Studio, the solution aims to support YouTubers throughout the creative process, such as helping them brainstorm video concepts, generate thumbnail and title ideas, plan projects, organize tasks and collaborate with their team.

Most notably, it has a feature that analyzes billions of publicly available YouTube videos in order to draw inspiration from similar creators.

Spotter Studio competes with various 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 what viewers are currently watching. However, Spotter Studio claims to differ from other tools because its solution is more tailored to individual preferences.

When creators sign up for Spotter Studio, they give it permission to access all of their publicly available YouTube videos. The company then uses these videos to provide custom suggestions that resonate with their audiences. The company says it doesn’t share the users’ personalized recommendations with others.

“It's looking at every video you've ever created and can see what has really worked for you and what has not worked for you,” Spotter founder and CEO Aaron DeBevoise explained to TechCrunch. “That data, plus the kind of performance data around the channel in general, will tailor every recommendation to that creator. So, [when] we have a situation where we have four creators, and they all enter in the same idea, they will all get different results based on who they are.”

Spotter’s “Brainstorm” feature generates ideas based on the creator's prompt and what they’ve created in the past. There are also override options to customize the results even further. For instance, there’s an option to describe the target audience. So, if the majority of viewers are male, creators can ask for ideas that target a female and non-binary audience.

There’s also a “Diversify” button that allows users to click on a generated idea and branch out into new, related yet different, ideas. For instance, if the topic is basketball, it can generate ideas for a collaboration with basketball players, a basketball competition or a personal story about basketball.

Its thumbnail tool is also personalized to each creator. It takes a creator's profile image and uses their likeness to generate thumbnail concept art.

Additionally, Spotter Studio’s “Projects” tool acts as an all-in-one project planner for organizing tasks and collaborating with teams. It also tracks projects throughout the different stages, from in development, post-production, ready to publish and published.

Interestingly, the AI also analyzes more than two billion top-performing videos on YouTube made by similar creators to offer Spotter users recommendations on how to boost their own videos. The feature, called “Outliers,” acts as a "research copilot," taking videos from other YouTubers that a creator's audience is also watching. Users can click on a title, and Spotter's AI tool will brainstorm ideas for their channel.

The practice of analyzing popular videos on YouTube may raise concerns about originality and creativity. Plagiarism is a significant issue among YouTubers, with many trying to publish as many videos as possible to quickly gain a large following. Last year, Harris Brewis (a.k.a. hbomberguy) called out multiple YouTubers for plagiarism. One of the accused was James Somerton, who was alleged to have taken excerpts from authors without proper attribution and reorganized words to present them as his original thoughts.

When speaking with Spotter’s EVP of product, Paul Bakaus, we mentioned the Outliers feature could be controversial among some creators. He told TechCrunch, "Creators are already [copying] every day, so that ship has sailed…That's probably not the best response.”

Although an unexpected answer from an executive, his statement is unfortunately correct. Replicating something that’s already successful has been done for decades and will likely never stop. Plus, while YouTube videos themselves are protected by copyright, the underlying idea and concept aren’t.

Bakaus claims the system doesn’t generate ideas that directly rip off the other person’s video. However, it doesn't reflect well to launch an AI tool that replicates what many creators are concerned about.

“We are very careful in the brainstorming and the underlying functionality here to never copy the actual video. So, if you hit a brainstorm icon on one of those buttons, the video ideas that you're getting are never actually the video that you just clicked on. Currently, we only use the title for inspiration, and we always make sure that it's extremely personalized," he added.

Spotter has been developing the AI tools for about a year now and has invited several creators to test them out, including Colin & Samir, Dude Perfect, Kinigra Deon, MrBeast, Rebecca Zamolo and others. During early beta testing, results showed an average of 49% increase in views in the first week compared to videos made without Spotter Studio, the startup claims.

The company says that the suite of AI tools will keep evolving, and Spotter Studio will receive new features every week while improving its current ones. Spotter is also introducing experimental features through its AI arm Spotter Labs. One is a “Story Beats” tool that provides outline help for content.

Spotter Studio is available now in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Australia and costs $49 per month. The company is currently offering a limited-time discount of $299 per year. There's also a free 30-day trial.