Filmmaking YouTubers Matti Haapoja and Sam "Kold" Kolder are under fire after posting glowing demos of Higgsfield's Seedance 2.5 that were not marked as ads — while other creators shared partnership offers from the startup's PR firms.
2026-08-22 · by Moe Ameen
In reporting that circulated around August 20–21, 2026, two well-known filmmaking YouTubers — Matti Haapoja and Sam "Kold" Kolder — drew a wave of criticism for posting videos that promoted the AI video startup Higgsfield. Both demoed Higgsfield's newly added Seedance 2.5 tool and framed the technology as a significant leap for video production. Neither video was labeled as an advertisement, and, per The Verge, neither the creators nor Higgsfield answered questions about whether the posts were paid partnerships. Kolder's video description also carried an affiliate link offering a discount on an annual Higgsfield subscription.
The backlash accelerated when other creators began posting screenshots of partnership offers they said they had received from PR firms working with Higgsfield. To viewers, that made the near-simultaneous, uniformly positive coverage look coordinated rather than independent — the appearance of a paid push dressed as genuine enthusiasm. The core objection was not "a creator took a sponsorship." It was the missing disclosure: an audience that trusts a filmmaker's recommendation had no clear signal that money may have changed hands.
A second, deeper thread ran underneath the disclosure fight — whether creators should be platforming generative-AI tools at all. Marques Brownlee pushed back on an analogy Haapoja drew between generative AI and the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the DSLR that put cinematic HD video in the hands of indie filmmakers. Brownlee's argument: the 5D Mark II was a physical tool people had to learn to use, whereas generative-AI models are trained on human-made work without credit or consent, so the comparison flatters the technology and skips the part creators are actually angry about.
The episode is not isolated. Through 2026, several creators have taken heat for AI-company money and undisclosed AI use, and Higgsfield in particular had already faced scrutiny earlier in the year. Treat the specifics here — who was paid, and how much — as unconfirmed; the creators and the company had not publicly detailed the arrangements as of this writing. What is verifiable is the pattern: audiences are now primed to read an unlabeled AI endorsement as a betrayal of trust.
The clean lesson here is a line most creators have not drawn yet: there is a difference between a product you put in front of your audience as an endorsement and a tool you use behind the camera to make and distribute your own work. Haapoja and Kolder got burned on the first — recommending an outside AI company to viewers without a clear label. A production tool you never pitch to anyone is not in that blast radius. [Kompozy](/) is built to sit on that safe side of the line: it is the private engine you run on your own source material — a talk, a client call, a long upload, your notes — to generate and publish finished content, not a brand you shill from the thumbnail.
Two things keep it honest in a climate this touchy. First, substance and voice: Kompozy generates from something real you already have, governed by a [Persona Brief](/glossary/persona-brief) that encodes how you actually think, so a [Persona Short](/glossary/persona-shorts), a carousel, or a blog reads as your perspective rather than the generic, uncredited-feeling output audiences have learned to reject as [AI slop](/glossary/ai-slop). Second, a human signs off: a per-post review gate in [Autopilot](/glossary/autopilot) means nothing publishes until you approve it — the exact accountability the Higgsfield videos lacked. And if you do disclose AI assistance in your workflow, one queue fans that disclosed, on-brand set across the eight social platforms plus blog and email at once. For the deeper playbook on running AI brand deals without losing your audience, see the guide on [AI creator sponsorship transparency](/guides/ai-creator-sponsorship-transparency).
The immediate case involves filmmakers Matti Haapoja and Sam "Kold" Kolder, who promoted AI startup Higgsfield's Seedance 2.5 tool in videos that were not labeled as ads. After other creators shared partnership offers from Higgsfield's PR firms, viewers concluded the endorsements may have been paid but undisclosed. The core objection is the missing disclosure, plus a broader unease about creators platforming generative-AI tools trained on human work.
As of the reporting around August 20–21, 2026, neither the creators nor Higgsfield had publicly confirmed whether the videos were paid partnerships, and they did not answer The Verge's questions about it. The videos were not marked as advertisements, and one carried a discount affiliate link. Treat the specifics of any payment as unconfirmed.
Brownlee disagreed with an analogy comparing generative AI to the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the DSLR that made cinematic HD video accessible to indie filmmakers. His point: the 5D Mark II was a physical tool people had to learn, whereas generative-AI models are trained on human-made work without credit or consent, so the comparison skips the part creators object to.
Draw a line between endorsing an AI product to your audience and using AI privately to produce your own work, and disclose material connections and AI assistance clearly. A content engine like Kompozy is used behind the scenes: it generates from your own source material under a Persona Brief and routes every post through a per-post human review gate before publishing across the eight social platforms plus blog and email — so a person signs off and the output carries your voice, not a hidden endorsement.