Good morning. Electronic music artist Fred again… is in the middle of a three-day YouTube livestream, finishing his mixtape in realtime and taking creative prompts from the audience. Please spam the chat with “Publish Press” to help fulfill our dreams of being name-dropped in a song. We’ll repay the favor when we go on tour.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Starting in 2027, an ad-supported version of NBC's Peacock will be free with a YouTube Premium subscription, bringing shows like Love Island USA, SNL, and live NFL and NBA games into Premium alongside its existing ad-free videos, music streaming, and downloads. Pricing hasn't been announced.

How we see it: The bundle kicks off YouTube's offense in the streaming wars. While Netflix has spent the past year signing YouTube talent—from Ms. Rachel to Mythical—YouTube isn't fighting back with a creator bidding war. It doesn't have to, our own Samir Chaudry said on LinkedIn.

He doesn’t expect YouTube to fund original content the way it tried with the now-shuttered YouTube Originals a decade ago.

Instead, Chaudry sees the Peacock deal as an indirect way to get paywalled creator content to the platform. For example, Peacock’s Emerging Artist series, which funded creator shows like Daren VonGirdner’s People Like Me.

What’s next: Today YouTube TV and YouTube are two separate apps. Chaudry predicts YouTube will eventually collapse into one app, with live TV, an ad tier, and Premium stocked with exclusive and licensed programming.

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John Kiriakou worked for nearly 20 years inside the CIA. As someone trained to keep quiet, he’s not the kind of podcast guest you easily book.

But thanks to an intro from Central Talent Booking, Theo Von did. Last month, he spoke with John about how and why he blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program.

WIth more than 3.5-million views, it’s This Past Weekend’s most-watched YouTube episode from the month of June.

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Last week IShowSpeed broke the record for most Instagram Reel views in 24 hours with 300M views. This week, an AI-generated video surpassed it—gaining 500M views in less than a day.

The details: The video, which shows a wave crashing onto a film set, was made by an AI account with 900K followers and 43 posts. It was sponsored by Higgsfield AI and includes an “AI info” label from Instagram to signal it was AI-generated, but the caption is otherwise misleading, stating there is “No CGI” and is a “hand-built” set. 

It’s unclear if views are botted, or if Instagram is pushing out the video to people’s feeds. 

AI research and education creator Jeremy Carrasco told us that it may be both—but over 100M viewbots in less than 24 hours was “highly unlikely” without Instagram automatically taking the content down.

Why it matters: Carrasco said the video is a “wake-up call” that AI content is out-performing creator content. “AI is winning recommendation algorithms, and if that doesn't change Meta’s behavior, maybe it’ll change yours.” Carrasco said.

His prediction: If AI-generated content keeps getting more views than human creators, the metric may lose its power as a metric brands can trust.

"[People betting on AI] think that the existing metrics for brand deals and engagement are just going to continue meaning what they currently mean,” Carrasco said. “But [...] now that humans aren't necessarily behind the creation, and humans aren't the best at optimizing for views, that may not hold.”

Worth noting: Hyper-realistic and misleading AI content isn’t new, but as its volume increases on short-form feeds, some platforms are taking note. YouTube recently took measures to demonetize AI-generated content that is “emotionally manipulative.” Will Meta do the same?