Hank Green—a novelist, comedian, and YouTuber with 3.2 million subscribers—recently issued an apology to his audience over his increasing use of AI chatbots. The controversy kicked off when, during a video on the educational channel Complexly, Green unexpectedly dropped the phrase "I appreciate the pushback," which seemed out of place. Viewers quickly speculated that he had drafted the script with a chatbot and inadvertently left in a response to one of his own prompts. In a now-deleted post on X, Green acknowledged that he had created the video "under a ton of pressure" and had turned to ChatGPT "for research on this script." He also clarified that the "pushback" line was actually directed at the episode's guest.

Green later offered a more detailed apology on Reddit, where he described himself as "mortified" for having "let so many people down," and announced plans to scale back his video output as a result. He insisted that ChatGPT had only been used to "locate papers and other resources for learning about topics," and that the words and perspectives in his content were still entirely his own. At the same time, he admitted that criticism over "diluting" himself was fair. He also noted that he's "not a pure AI-hater," while listing several concerns about the technology, including its environmental impact and "the speed at which these companies are trying to consolidate economic power."

"Ultimately, what I am most scared of is ruining myself for people, but I have not been managing my impulses well," he said. "You need to know that my words are mine. I don't think that this hasn't been true, but I've been moving so fast that my own process isn't actually clear to me and I want to have it be a guarantee moving forward."

It seems Green will be taking time to figure out how to make that guarantee a reality. In the meantime, he plans to pause or post less frequently across his various YouTube channels. Green expressed a desire to focus on work like a recent meditative video "where the writing was the whole thing and I felt it all the way down." He also mentioned he'd likely create more videos featuring his "dumb unscripted straight to camera thoughts."

"But mostly I need to come to terms with the fact that the level of dopamine I've been getting from interacting with LLMs…with doing more and more and more and more…is not healthy for me or good for the world," Green said. "It is careless, and has disconnected me from where people are on this."