We have finally achieved it: the total automation of the human ego. YouTube, that digital drainage pipe of our collective consciousness, has announced that it will soon allow 'creators'—a term used with the same generous looseness one might apply to 'artisan' when describing a Subway sandwich—to generate AI likenesses of themselves for Shorts. This is not merely a feature update; it is a funeral notice for the concept of human presence. For years, these digital buskers have complained about 'burnout,' as if shouting at a ring light for eight hours a week is equivalent to mining coal in the 19th century. Google, ever the empathetic corporate overlord, has provided the solution: you no longer need to be present to be profitable. Your digital ghost can continue to haunt the feeds of the dopamine-depleted masses while you do... what, exactly? What does a YouTube creator do when they aren’t performing? Probably staring into a mirror, wondering why their reflection doesn't have a 'Subscribe' button hovering over its head.

This is the ultimate gift for the person who has absolutely nothing to say but insists on saying it forever. Imagine the relief for the average influencer. No more pesky hygiene, no more exhausting wardrobe changes, and no more of the tiresome burden of having a physical form that ages or requires sustenance. Now, your favorite skincare guru or crypto-shilling man-child can be rendered in perfect, uncanny-valley glory, forever stuck in a state of mid-tier attractiveness and high-octane enthusiasm. It is the democratization of the wax museum, only the statues talk, they never stop talking, and they really want you to check out the link in their bio for a 10% discount on overpriced athletic wear. We have reached the event horizon of the attention economy. Google knows what we are: we are just data points with thumbs, and if a generative model can keep those thumbs twitching better than a breathing human, the human is effectively redundant.

The political class will, of course, find a way to ruin this further. The Left will engage in a performative panic about 'AI ethics' and the 'commodification of identity,' all while their most prominent activists use these same tools to record 400 variations of a lecture on why your sourdough starter is a tool of oppression. On the Right, the grift will simply become more efficient. Why pay a real human to scream about 'globalist conspiracies' when a generative model can do it with more consistent anger and fewer bathroom breaks? Both sides of the aisle are essentially just different flavors of the same automated outrage machine, and YouTube is simply providing the lubricant for the gears. They aren't worried about the 'truth' or 'authenticity'—concepts that died in a Silicon Valley boardroom years ago—they are worried about 'retention.' If an AI version of a person can keep a teenager’s eyes glued to a phone for three seconds longer than the actual person can, then the actual person is obsolete.

Historically, humans built monuments to their vanity out of marble and bronze. We have chosen a more pathetic medium: low-bitrate video loops. We are witnessing the birth of the post-human influencer—a creature made of math and marketing, devoid of soul, yet perfectly optimized to sell you a VPN you don’t need. It’s a beautiful irony. In our desperate scramble to be 'seen' by an audience of strangers, we have invented a way to be entirely absent. We are building a digital necropolis where the dead—or the merely bored—can continue to pester the living for eternity. The 'Shorts' feed will become a carousel of ghosts, each one more vapid than the last, mimicking the gestures of humanity without the inconvenient requirement of actually having a brain.

Consider the implications for the audience. The average viewer, already numbed by a decade of algorithmic grooming, won't even notice the difference. Why would they? The content was already synthetic. The emotions were already scripted. The smiles were already fake. Moving from a real person pretending to be a bot to a bot pretending to be a person is a lateral move at best. It’s the final stage of the lobotomy. We have optimized ourselves into a state where 'being' is optional and 'consuming' is mandatory. So, buckle up. Your feed is about to be populated by the hollowed-out husks of people who were already pretty hollow to begin with. It’s the perfect end to the human experiment: a world where no one is home, but everyone is still talking. We didn't get flying cars, but we did get an infinite supply of AI-generated teenagers telling us how to live our lives. Progress is truly a marvel.