Marques Brownlee calls out “trash” AI chatbot using his name without permission

Tech YouTuber Marques ‘MKBHD’ Brownlee has taken to Twitter/X to call out a “trash” AI chatbot for using his name without permission.

Since the beginning of 2023, AI chatbots have begun taking over the industry. Meta AI was among the first to use the faces of famous celebrities and influencers, but they’re far from the only.

With over 18 million subscribers on YouTube and millions more across social media, there’s plenty of reasons why a company would want to use Marques Brownlee’s likeness in their product.

On February 14, 2024, however, MKBHD took to Twitter/X to call out a “trash” chatbot that decided to use his likeness without asking for permission.

MKBHD slams “trash” AI Chatbot

In the tweet, Marques shared screenshot of the AI Chatbot using his likeness and warned his followers about it.

“There’s a random AI company parading around an AI chatbot to “chat with a YouTuber” and it’s so incredibly bad,” he said. “Just spews lies. They also never got permission to use my likeness, and I suspect several others on this list were never even asked. Avoid this TRASH.”

In the screenshots you can see Marques asking if they got permission to use his likeness and if they were the real Marques Brownlee… and the bot answered yes to both questions.

Marques detailed his distaste for the chatbot more in the replies to the tweet, explaining that he doesn’t mind companies training AI on his videos.

“It’s not actually training the AI on my videos that I take issue with; it’s using my likeness without permission (that’s why Meta had to use codenames),” he said.

In another, he made it clear that he thinks companies using his likeness is “actually fine” as long as they don’t use his real name to advertise it. As an example, he used Meta AI’s chatbot that uses MrBeast as the face but uses Zach and “The Funny Man” as its name and descriptor.

MKBHD isn’t the only YouTuber featured on the chatbot, either. Cody Ko, MrBeast, Lex Friedman, Faze Rug, and a handful of other big names are available to chat with.

It’s unknown as of writing if Marques is going to seek legal action, but we’ll update you if he shares more about the “trash” chatbot.