---
title: 'Hank Green Admitted Something Major...'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=0eEBfYAHfEA'
video_id: '0eEBfYAHfEA'
date: 2026-08-06
duration_sec: 827
---

# Hank Green Admitted Something Major...

> Source: [Hank Green Admitted Something Major...](https://youtube.com/watch?v=0eEBfYAHfEA)

## Summary

The video examines the controversy surrounding Hank Green's use of AI for research, leading to a public apology and a broader discussion about racial bias in AI accusations. It contrasts Hank Green's experience with that of black authors who faced severe consequences without proof of AI use, highlighting systemic double standards.

### Key Points

- **Fact-Check Notes Spark Controversy** [00:30] — During an episode of 'Ask Hank Anything,' viewers noticed a high number of fact-check notes flagging statements as incorrect or unverifiable, leading to suspicion of AI-generated answers.
- **Hank Green Admits to AI Use** [01:37] — Hank Green deleted a tweet and then posted on Reddit, admitting he used ChatGPT for research and relied too heavily on AI-generated notes, calling it 'a bad habit.'
- **Complexly's AI Policy** [02:28] — Complexly's AI policy allows AI for idea generation and preliminary research but prohibits AI-generated scripts, animations, and visuals that mislead viewers.
- **Hank's Personal Struggle and Action Plan** [03:32] — Hank Green described the 'dopamine hit' from using LLMs as unhealthy and announced he would post less, pause two channels, and step back to recalibrate.
- **Mixed Public Reaction** [04:36] — Public reaction was mixed: some praised his honesty, others criticized his reliance on AI, and many drew comparisons to black authors who faced harsher consequences.
- **Double Standard: Black Authors' Careers Damaged** [06:54] — A black author lost a $2 million book deal after an unproven AI accusation, and H.M. Wolfe's 'Dagger Mouth' was flagged by a flawed AI checker used in a non-peer-reviewed study.

## Transcript

creator that I did not ever expect would get embroiled in an AI controversy. And that creator is Hank Green, who is an extremely popular education creator who has been making videos and books since forever, honestly. And in terms of
that, I relied on a lot of his videos, actually. So, let's delve into this entire controversy and break it down. And before we get started, again, please don't send hate to any parties involved. And also, look at how cute my son Corny
this video from Complexly, which is actually a organization that Hank and his brother John co-founded, and they owned it up until 2026, and then it was this year. But, they have a series called Ask Hank Anything, and this was
whole controversy. So, this episode features another creator called Sooup Time, and they're going on the questions together. And what people noticed from corner, there are some fact-check notes that come up. And people really picked
up on the fact that there were a lot, again, of fact-checking notes flagging things that Hank said as incorrect or that they couldn't verify it. Here's a couple more examples that a Twitter user pulled up. Another one, here is another
confirm the science. Essentially, he got roasted. And a lot of people in the YouTube comments also noticed this as well. And notably, a lot of people felt like Hank might have been reading some AI-generated answers, and that is why a
lot of his responses, the fact-checkers couldn't fully verify. And Hank Green put up a now-deleted tweet where he instead links the Reddit page Nerdfighters. So, visiting that, this was actually the tweet that was deleted,
where Hank says, "I produced this that episode under a ton of pressure. So, I went and checked my process from start to finish. I did use ChatGPT for research on this script, and watching it, I definitely get an AI feel. So, I
think it's fair to say I was relying too much on generated notes. That's the thing I've been doing, and it's a bad habit at a time when I've overcommitted and the script for this and neither contain the I appreciate the pushback
line. So that particular moment was an ad-lib in reference to my guest pushing back on me saying the words were purely made up. And in the comment section, writing three things to start. One, I'm mortified that I have let so many people
happened. Two, I'm going to change things about how I make stuff. And three, Complexly's AI policy is public and well considered and adhered to by reading. So linked is the AI policy and the AI policy essential is AI makes a
lot of stuff. We respect creators and we recognize that AI can't replace creators and that tools cannot generate ideas or reflect what biases they have and we must have ownership of our content. So they say that they will not produce
by AI. They will not produce videos containing illustrations or animations created by AI trained on non-consensual data sets. When AI tools trained on consensual data sets to create visuals, they will ensure they're not misleading
viewers. And four, they may use AI tools to suggest ideas for scripts or visual preliminary research. And this was updated in 2023. And elaborating a little bit more in his comments, Hank says that he has been relying too
heavily on AI as a research aid and that it can be useful to discover research papers he didn't know existed but that it has been a detriment to his work because it didn't give him the freedom to find his own way around the topic.
But he highlights that he uses AI to find papers and topics to research but you're still getting his version of his take. And he agrees when people say that delves a little bit more into his stance
on AI. He highlights that he's not an AI hater but that he is disturbed on the way the models were trained. And that two, these companies are consolidating economic power way too fast and that everybody should be scared and that it
And that he's been really feeling the pressure to make a lot of things but he acknowledges that a lot doesn't mean it's good. And notably, he writes here, with the fact that the level of dopamine I've been getting from interacting with
LLMs, with doing more and more and more and more, is not healthy for me or good for the world. It is careless and has disconnected me from where people are on adds, "I was talking with this with Katherine, his wife, last night, and she
didn't pull any punches, and neither did his brother. Neither think that he's been healthy in his usage of AI." So, what is he going to do in the future? One, he's going to post less on his channel called Hank's Channel, and he's
pausing his other channel, Smosh and 4 by 3. And he ends, "I'm very sorry for harming the thing this is all based on." And about this whole situation, people are very, very torn. There's a lot of people who are very disheartened finding
saying things like, "It's absolutely wild how somebody as smart as him can give in to such destructive programming." On one hand, I'm glad he others to stop using AI, but it's really disappointing coming from somebody that
seems to be educated. Another user says, "The best time to use AI was never. The he's being mature by acknowledging a failing and stepping back." Another user Hank Green for talking about how addictive LLMs can be, and how the
pressure to produce makes leaning on AI seem impossible to avoid. He's taking a break to recalibrate, which is a good example for all of us. We just want Hank shortcuts through AI Hank just to have more Hank." But other people were also
likening this situation with Hank Green and his of using generative AI to what a lot of POC authors have experienced, very notably black authors. A user most part, but him getting thanked for talking about how addictive LLMs are,
white male privilege. A black author just got a $2.5 million book deal taken away because of an accusation after 14 editors reviewed his work and was offered the deal. Yet, we have Hank Green using AI for research to make
content and accept it. Now, this is BS and highly irresponsible. He should have known better. And they add, limiting replies, etc. If you don't care about how black person was treated compared to a white man, I don't care, read a book
Threads writes, this year we've seen three authors get attacked and two of accusations. Two of those authors were protected, he wrote a story with a Nigerian main character. We've also seen
proudly announced their AI usage, all white and not seem to experience any harm to their careers. Why do white AI users get praised while black creatives unverified suggestion? Bear with me on this because a lot of times when I talk
intersectionality, a lot of people get lost in the sauce, etc. But, I think it is something that is very important to kind of discuss because, sure, right? Not every single situation is going to be one-to-one overlapped, but it is
something that should be mentioned. This is an article in New York Post titled Debut novelist $2 million deal for amazing book canceled on suspicions of AI use. Where it was a debut novel. This is the author's first book. They won a
$2 million deal and it was literally like yeeted the next day for suspected AI use. This book was so good, there were 14 bidders. People were fighting over it. People calling the book stunningly good. Everyone fell in love
with it, etc. But, then there was potential AI suspicion, right? And the author denied that it was written with AI and insisted that this controversy was due to racial bias, stating three black authors received major publishing
deals canceled or disrupted following suspicions about AI. There seems to be a writer produces work that attracts significant attention, the work could not possibly be his own. And that AI detection tools are widely known to
produce false positives and that if the manuscript genuinely had AI in it, that there were a whole bunch of people that reviewed the manuscript before it went people should have caught it. And what's
Well, it is with an extremely popular book called Dagger Mouth that is penned by an author named H.M. Wolfe, who is also black. And the Dagger Mouth has controversy related to colorism of the character because people felt like the
character art was not dark enough to represent the character's skin color. here we're talking about this situation. Because a different article, this one written by The Atlantic, they did a
study of books on Kindle and they used an AI checker to check for rare expressions, aka strings of five or more words that is commonly found in AI-generated writing, and that Dagger Mouth apparently has a lot of such
that appear word for word in self-published ebooks by other authors. And that the author of Dagger Mouth, H.M. Wolfe, also denied it, saying, "I to generative AI and what it's doing to writers, artists, and the creative
community. I don't believe it belongs in the writing process." But the article also adds, "Hey, looking at other parts of the writing process though, Wolfe writes slowly. It's not like she is cranking out massive amounts of books
one every 2 weeks where the speed alone would make you suspicious of AI usage." Where the Dagger Mouth was written, I think published in 2025 it says, and then the sequel is supposed to come out in 2027, like 2 years afterwards. The
pacing of her writing does not make it feel like it's AI-generated. And also suspicious in terms of the timing of this article coming out because Dagger literally like a couple days ago, like right around when that article dropped.
you know the guy who did the article?" Well, apparently, allegedly, according to people on Threads, was actually emailing authors asking for information about accessing their books to, quote, "use as human-authored books to check
against AI books and quote. This was the Stony Brook University study where they were talking about this where it was like your books would help anchor that article came out, people were basically dragging The Atlantic. It got community
Dagger Mouth was written by an AI bot and people were also pointing out the fact that the study has also not been peer-reviewed and there's no definitive proof that Wolf used AI. Why was that the title then? And again, people are
checkers, the one that was used in the notoriously incorrect. This person fed an article that was, according to them, they know it's AI generated and it was flagged as 100% human. And other people
have used AI checkers and they've put in works that were written by authors before AI existed. Like, I don't know, The Odyssey for instance. As an example, I don't think that's the exact title, but they would put in notable classics
and those classics were getting flagged as like 90% AI generated, which can't be possible. And on another note as well, there is also the controversy of feeding actual writing into AI checkers. So like feeding people's writing into AI, right?
People are also like that's not cool. Now, this might sound like a very, very arriving back at the original point I was trying to talk about is that this is a interesting dynamic that happens where I'm not saying that like we should
through the internet, but we have the case of these black authors who were not proven to use AI. In fact, there is no evidence. There is only accusations, but these accusations are not proof. And unless there is legitimate substantial
proof that they did use AI, I'm going to assume that the checker's just wrong because they're notoriously inaccurate. And I never finished Dagger Mouth, but I did read like a 20% of it and to me it reads human made, right? I've read a
couple of AI books on this channel and you've seen me read them. They've instantly looked very AI generated with the it's not this, but this and I didn't want this, but that, you know, the whole cadence. Dagger Mouth human written to
me. But beyond that again, these are two instances of two black authors I just talked about who experienced massive amounts of controversy and detriment for something that was not even true. And in this other instance, we have a white
male creator who admitted to using AI. And there is a fair amount of the public that's praising him for bringing awareness to how dangerous and addictive LLMs can be. And I do think multiple things can be true. And it can be true
that like Hank Green is an educator who has made a lot of videos over the course of over a decade that has really helped out a lot of people and also fallen down generative AI. And I don't think we
that he's going to have zero impact to his career from this that other black creators who have not been proven to use generative AI because there is no evidence they did suffering damage to their career. So, I'm sorry this is a
very long-winded tangent, but it is something that I do want to bring light to because this is a point of contention that has been discussed around this of the day, at least Hank Green came forward, apologized, and admitted to
what he did and that he's going to take steps back from engaging in behaviors that caused him to fall in this rabbit hole, essentially overworking himself. continue to make content in the same line like the content back in the day
that people really enjoyed from him. And in the same breath as well, I do think that a lot of black writers, black authors are getting unfairly aggressively punished for things they didn't even do. And that it's not fair
and that the colorism is real there. And it is also something that should be kept day, what are your thoughts on this entire thing? I would love to hear your below. Normally my videos are not this long-winded tangent e, but I did want to
talk about the whole Daequan out and the situation with that $2.5 million book deal because it just didn't sit right with me personally. So anyways, yeah, if most cooked sunburn ever. Wear your sunscreen, kids. Please wear your
of this, it's going to be the most horrific-looking tan for a very long time. But, low-key, low-key, as it's like lightening up, it's getting kind of check me out on my vlog channel, cat.yippee, or in another video. Peace.