Popular YouTubers Got Called Out for Posting AI Video Ads Without Saying So
Two popular YouTube creators, Matti Haapoja and Sam "Kold" Kolder, posted videos showing off an AI video tool called Seedance 2.5, made by a company called Higgsfield. Viewers and other creators pushed back hard because the videos looked like ads but were not labeled as ads. Neither the creators nor Higgsfield answered The Verge's questions about whether they were paid to make the videos. The Verge
Haapoja posted his video to Facebook with the title "Seedance is the 5DmkII moment of the AI filmmaking revolution. Big budget movies..." The Verge described it as basically an infomercial. It showed how a full-length film called Cully Hill Boys was made using text prompts, then told viewers to go to Higgsfield AI to try the tool themselves. Kolder's video was titled "AI is replacing me." Neither video said anything about it being sponsored. The Verge
The backlash grew when other creators shared screenshots of partnership offers they had received from PR firms working for Higgsfield. Fans concluded that Higgsfield was using creators to promote its product in a coordinated way without telling audiences. The Verge
Another well-known creator, Marques Brownlee, publicly disagreed with Haapoja's comparison of AI video generation to the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, a camera that changed filmmaking when it came out in 2008. Responding on Threads, Brownlee noted that the 5D Mark II was revolutionary as a form factor. His point was that the camera gave filmmakers a better tool to do work they were already doing, while AI video tools are trained on real human-made material without giving credit to the original creators. The Verge; Threads
The product at the center of all this is Seedance 2.5, which Higgsfield describes as ByteDance's flagship video generation model. That means it is a tool that creates video clips from written descriptions. According to Higgsfield's own documentation, Seedance 2.5 can generate cinematic clips up to 30 seconds long with synchronized audio, sharp 4K resolution, the ability to use up to 50 different reference images or inputs at once to guide the output, consistent characters across different shots, and precise editing of specific regions within a frame. Higgsfield published a full prompting guide on August 13 and a comparison against the earlier Seedance 2.0 in late June. Higgsfield; Higgsfield Blog; Higgsfield Blog
On the cheapest plan that includes the model, a short 8-second clip at 720p resolution costs between $2.55 and $5.76 across three platforms: Dreamina, Higgsfield, and Runway, according to Higgsfield's own pricing blog. Higgsfield Blog
Cully Hill Boys, the film showcased in Haapoja's video, is Higgsfield's own feature-length production. It stars AI-generated lookalikes of YouTubers Mikyle "N3on" Rafiq and Matt Kiatipis. The film came out the week before the backlash with little attention, drawing mixed reactions that were amplified by posts from the film's own cast promoting it. The Verge
The 5D Mark II comparison deserves a closer look because it blends two very different turning points into one analogy. The 5D Mark II, released in 2008, lowered the barrier to cinematic image capture by putting a large, high-quality sensor in a camera body costing roughly $2,700. The creative labor, skill, and authorship stayed entirely with the person operating the camera. AI video models like Seedance 2.5 lower a different barrier. They take over the creative act itself, generating motion, composition, and audio from text prompts. The work shifts from the creator to the AI model, and the training data behind that model comes from human creators who never agreed to participate and are not credited or paid. Brownlee's objection, at its core, is that calling Seedance a "5D Mark II moment" hides this distinction.
The disclosure question is the more immediately important issue. The FTC, the U.S. agency that regulates advertising, has been clear in recent guidance that any material connection between someone endorsing a product and the company behind it must be conspicuously disclosed. The standard is whether a regular viewer would understand a post to be independently produced. When a creator directs viewers to a specific platform by name, demonstrates that platform's product, and other creators confirm receiving paid partnership offers from the same company's PR representatives, leaving out a disclosure is not a neutral choice. It is, at minimum, a legal risk for the creators and for Higgsfield.
What remains unanswered is whether Higgsfield's strategy was deliberate. The screenshots of partnership offers shared by other creators suggest a coordinated outreach campaign, but the scope, the number of creators approached, and the specific terms offered are not yet public. Haapoja and Kolder's silence on the question of compensation, combined with Higgsfield's non-response to The Verge, leaves the factual record incomplete.
The broader pattern here is one anyone who has followed technology for a while will recognize. When a platform needs adoption and legitimacy, it turns to established creators whose audiences trust their editorial judgment. That trust is the asset being leveraged. If the audience cannot tell where the creator's independent assessment ends and the sponsored pitch begins, the trust wears down. The technology in Seedance 2.5, by all technical indications, is genuinely advancing in capability and cost-efficiency. The marketing strategy wrapped around it may be doing it more harm than the technology's critics ever could.
