Humane AI increased more than $230 million before even shipping a product. And when the Ai Pin—which costs $699 plus a $24 monthly fee—was finally released, nearly every tech critic came to the same dismaying realization: This much-hyped product, which promises to disrupt smartphone dominance, isn’t very good.
However, some viewers are saying that Marques Brownlee, the hugely popular YouTuber known as MKBHD, will be solely responsible if the company ultimately fails. Shortly after Humane AI pulled its long-awaited product, the conversation turned away from the product itself and instead toward how Brownlee talked about it in his own review.
of Brownlee video The headline is admittedly a bit clicky: “Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed… So Far.” But when you watch the actual video, the title delivers on its promise.
“It was really hard to come up with a title for this video,” Brownlee says in the review, which currently has over 5 million views. “But I will say, at one point, my working title for it was, ‘This product is either the dumbest thing ever, or I’m an idiot.’
Brownlee is unusually influential, with over 18 million subscribers on YouTube, but his reviews echo those of other reviewers: the pin has poor battery life. It is difficult to wear. It makes mistakes too often to be reliable. Its laser projection screen is completely ineffective outdoors. And it’s just not worth the same sticker price as an Android phone.
However, the criticism started a whirlwind on social media.
“I find it distasteful, almost unethical, to say that when you have 18 million subscribers,” said former AWS engineer Daniel Vassallo. He wrote at X on Sunday. “It’s hard to explain why, but with great reach comes great responsibility. Potentially killing someone else’s budding project smacks of carelessness. First, do no harm.”
Another tech content creator, Alex Finn, wrote to X: “MKBHD bankrupted a company in 41 seconds,” referring to the opening of his video. Finn later added, “If that video had never come out, they would have sold so many more.”
As the debate began to heat up, MKBHD tweeted Vassallo, saying: “We disagree about what my job is.”
When asked for comment, Vassallo said, “A lot of people thought I was defending Humane or their product. I was not. My point was about the scale of MKBHD’s influence and how that power deserves more rigor than the sensational YouTube headline: “Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed.” The power to crush a company is not to be taken lightly, and this title is what most people will see. Real criticism was fair and balanced.”
An underdog worth $800 million
Critics of MKBHD’s video act as if Humane AI is an outsider in space. But this isn’t an early-stage green startup trying to create new hardware. This is a company that raised a Series C round and attracted investors like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and various top venture capital firms before consumers even got their hands on the product.
“Call me cynical, but I’m wary of startups with massive war capital but no commercialized product to speak of,” wrote TechCrunch reporter Kyle Wiggers after last year’s Series C raise.
When asked for comment, MKBHD directed TechCrunch to its newest Reply to YouTube in the situation.
“All any honest criticism really does is just accelerate what was already happening,” he tells the paper video.
Less than a day after it was posted, the following video has more than 2 million views.
This is not an isolated incident for MKBHD. The YouTuber has also been accused of inciting the downfall of EV startup Fisker after disparaging the Fisker Ocean car in a similarly titled video last month:This is the worst car I have ever reviewed.”
After Brownlee published his review, Fisker laid off 15% of its staff and halted production. But Fisker was already in freefall before Brownlee said the Fisker Ocean was the worst car he had ever reviewed. Indeed, at the time, it revealed in a regulatory filing spied by TechCrunch that it had just $121 million left in the bank.
Additionally, in the month leading up to the MKBHD overhaul, federal safety regulators began investigating Fisker Ocean for complaints about brakes that didn’t work well. TechCrunch has separately learned that Ocean drivers have been complaining to Fisker about poor braking performance, faulty key fobs and sudden power loss for months. A customer wrote to Fisker that they feared for their lives when their car suddenly lost power while driving on the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles.
So is Fisker failing because they put out a dangerously poor product or because a very popular YouTuber said the car is bad?
Fortunately, Humane AI’s subpar pin won’t put anyone in mortal danger. But these parallel incidents point to the same misplaced anger at Brownlee for his outspoken criticism of the offending products.
An uncomfortable but familiar criticism
Some Black technicians saw the MKBHD criticism through a different lens.
The Humane AI pin was widely circulated on the tech review board, but the only person receiving excessive and lengthy criticism for his review is MKBHD, a Black man.
There were also some familiar tropes in how he received criticism: constant hammering of how he presented the imitations of criticism; tone policinga technique commonly used to specifically dismiss what Black people say, just because a person doesn’t like the way it was said.
“If Brownlee were anything but Black, this would be ‘an honest critique that shines a light on the AI bubble,'” a Black founder told TechCrunch. “On the contrary, he is ‘harsh’ and ‘it is not fair that such a well-funded company can go bankrupt. He should be more graceful in his criticism.’ In a world full of fraud and deceit, Marques must do exactly what he believes is right. And he did.”
The tone of the review headline also depends on how you look at it — MKBHD included “for now” in the title, allowing for the possibility that Humane AI could eventually improve what every reviewer now agrees is a flawed product.
It’s also notable that the tech community reserved particular criticism for a black man who exercises power through his reviews, rather than the other white male tech podcasts, voices, and online critics who always share their voices and are praised for their observations and criticism. in the products. It seemed as if some expected MKBHD to be held to a higher standard in a way not usually expressed against prominent white tech influences.
“Tech has problems with bias against black people, tech has problems with media being critics, not cheerleaders, so of course tech has problems with a view of black tech media that is critical of fanboy stuff like AI and IoT,” the black investor told TechCrunch. “That doesn’t make his criticism any less valid or the cry any less impossible, but it makes me wonder how anyone can watch this playout without noticing all the dog whistles.”
But it’s remarkable in itself – both for Brownlee and for the creator economy more generally – that a single YouTuber can have such an impact.
In an interview with Colin and Samir, Brownlee reflects on an earlier media era when tech critics at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times were some of the only voices people went to for opinions on new technology. Now, however, anyone on the internet can have a say, regardless of their institutional affiliation.
“When one of my YouTube videos is uploaded to a product, quite often hundreds of others are uploaded to the same product at the same time,” he said. “There are so many more voices now.”
