Cliff Tan’s paid AI promotion hit the fault line between creators’ need to stay current and audiences’ fear that the tools will hollow out the human work they came to watch. He has apologized for the disappointment — but insists retreat is not a serious answer.

On Monday, the London-based creator behind Dear Modern, whose YouTube channel has 2.4 million subscribers, posted a sponsored video for Dreamina, a ByteDance-owned AI company. The demonstration used the platform to turn Tan’s hand-drawn sketches into an animated floor plan, a task he said was meant to speed up rendering rather than replace his design ideas.¹

The response was sharper than Tan expected. Commenters accused him of embracing “AI slop” and selling out; one plea not to “sell yourself to AI” drew 1,800 likes. Tan later apologized to viewers who felt he had changed, while leaving the ad online.¹

His position is deliberately split. Tan describes himself as “really, really analog” and says AI is not likely to become part of how he makes his videos. Yet he told Business Insider he had pushed Dreamina to allow a more skeptical, follower-conscious pitch than the company initially wanted. “I should say that you can use it, but only in the right way,” he recalled.¹

For angry fans, the sponsorship raised a broader authenticity question: whether a creator known for tactile, personal design can credibly promote software associated with automated output. Tan’s counterargument is economic rather than aesthetic. “You can’t just avoid it forever,” he said. “The industry is using it. You need to embrace it if you don’t want to be out of a job.”¹

That does not mean he has ruled out another endorsement. If AI can genuinely help professionals or educate viewers “in a way that is positive for their growth,” Tan said, he may consider it — a stance likely to keep the argument alive.¹