Hank Green has spent nearly two decades answering the internet’s questions, but this time viewers had one for him: Did ChatGPT write that?Green says it did not, although the controversy has prompted the longtime YouTuber and science communicator to reconsider how much he uses AI in the first place. In a lengthy Reddit response posted July 31, Green said he plans to make fewer videos and pause two online word games after admitting that his reliance on large language models had become "not healthy for me or good for the world."
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"I’m mortified that I have let so many people down," Green wrote. "I’m going to change things about how I make stuff."
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How "I appreciate the pushback" started the backlashThe questions began with a recent 55-minute episode of Complexly’s Ask Hank Anything, featuring TikTok creator Soupytime. During a segment recorded separately from their conversation, Green said, “A better way to say it, and I appreciate the pushback, is a word is a human invention.”That "I appreciate the pushback" caught viewers’ attention. The phrase is commonly associated with chatbots responding to a correction, and because Green appeared to be speaking alone in that portion of the video, some people speculated that he had accidentally read language generated by ChatGPT.Green responded in a since-deleted post on X, explaining that he had produced the episode "under a ton of pressure." He confirmed that he used ChatGPT to research the script, but said neither his notes nor the script contained the disputed phrase. According to Green, it was an ad-lib referring to a disagreement with Soupytime earlier in the episode.The line may have been his, but Green conceded that the broader impression was not coming from nowhere."I think it’s fair to say I was relying too much on generated notes," Green wrote in the deleted post. "That’s a thing I’ve been doing, and it’s a bad habit at a time when I’ve overcommitted myself."
