Interior design creator Cliff Tan, best known for his Dear Modern YouTube channel, has apologised to his 2.4 million subscribers after running a paid advertisement for Dreamina, ByteDance’s AI-powered creative tool. The ad, which was posted over the weekend, quickly drew a wave of criticism from viewers who felt the promotion clashed with Tan's previous statements about artificial intelligence. In a follow-up video published on Monday, Tan said he was sorry for disappointing his fans and acknowledged that the partnership had caused real frustration.
The apology
Tan, whose channel focuses on interior design, space planning, and feng shui, often shares hand-drawn sketches and practical advice on making the most of living spaces. His approachable style has earned him millions of followers across social media platforms. The sponsored video was therefore highly visible when it appeared, and it did not take long for the comment section to fill with negative reactions.
Opening the follow-up video, Tan said: "Yesterday I made a video on AI, and it disappointed many of you. I’m really sorry about that." He went on to explain that he had thought the software "would be genuinely useful to fellow designers" and that he did not want viewers "with the right sentiments, to be martyrs in a world that is increasingly leaving us behind."
The AI ad and the backlash
The advertisement was for Dreamina, an AI tool developed by ByteDance that turns written prompts into animated video. In the sponsored segment, Tan showed how he had uploaded his own hand-drawn sketches and used the software to animate them into a floor plan. He also tried to pre-empt criticism by stating in the ad that he does not "like AI" because "it makes you forget to use your brain." That attempt at inoculation did little to calm his audience.
Viewers were quick to express their disappointment. One comment, which collected more than 1,700 likes, said: "No, Mr. Cliff. Please. Don’t sell yourself to AI." Other responses echoed the same sentiment, with some accusing the creator of abandoning the very principles that made his videos popular. The backlash was intense enough that Tan felt compelled to address it directly in a separate video on Monday.
The apology was met with a mixture of relief and scepticism. Some fans thanked him for listening, while others argued that the sponsorship should have been declined from the outset. The episode illustrates how sensitive the topic of AI has become in creative communities, particularly among audiences who fear that generative tools could replace human skill and judgement.
ByteDance's AI tools
Part of the anger was directed not only at Tan but also at the advertiser. Dreamina is the AI brand of CapCut, the video editing app owned by ByteDance. It runs on the company's Seedance models, which ByteDance recently fitted with watermarking and IP guardrails before a global rollout. Despite those guardrails, many creators remain wary of a tool that could, in their view, contribute to the devaluation of original design work.
A week of creator apologies
Tan is not the first creator to face this kind of backlash this month. Hank Green, a science communicator with more than 3.2 million YouTube subscribers, apologised on August 4 after revealing that he had used ChatGPT to help find research papers and sources for his scripts. Following the criticism, Green published a personal AI policy in which he ruled out allowing a language model to write, edit, or outline any part of his content.
The two cases are different in their details but similar in their underlying dynamic. In both instances, the creators did not generate content wholesale with AI. Tan used a tool to animate his own sketches; Green used a chatbot to assist with research. Both nevertheless faced significant pushback from audiences who view any association with AI as a betrayal of authenticity. This matters for anyone considering influencer marketing around AI products.
The risks of AI sponsorships
The backlash also comes at a time when YouTube is stepping up its own enforcement against low-quality AI content. The platform has been criticised for allowing "slop" to flood recommendations, and it has introduced measures to label realistic synthetic media and remove spam. Human creators who openly embrace AI tools can find themselves caught in a broader crackdown on content that is perceived as lazy or mass-produced, even when their work is not.
The incident also highlights the pressures of the influencer economy. Sponsorships are a major source of income for YouTube creators, and AI companies are eager to reach large audiences. The rates offered for such deals can be attractive, but the reputational risk can be just as large. In Tan's case, a single sponsored video generated thousands of critical comments and news coverage, undermining the trust he has built over years of content.
Creators who do choose to work with AI advertisers may need to be more transparent about how the tool is used and what it cannot do. They may also need to prepare for a segment of their audience that will never be comfortable with the partnership. As the reaction to Tan's video shows, a disclaimer inside the ad is not enough to neutralise core objections.
AI in interior design
The professional design world, meanwhile, has been moving in a different direction. The British Institute of Interior Design said last year that AI "has a growing presence in interior design." Stephen Dick, a firm founder quoted by the institute, said that "the possibilities are impressive" when it comes to text-to-image visualisation tools. These tools allow designers to generate multiple concept images in seconds, helping clients visualise options before any physical work begins.
However, the divide between professional enthusiasm and public suspicion remains wide. Designers have long used software to create mood boards and photorealistic renders, but generative AI raises new questions about originality, copyright, and the value of human expertise. For a creator like Tan, whose brand is built on his personal eye for space and his hand-drawn communication style, even a paid endorsement of such tools can feel like a contradiction.
For the wider industry, the episode is a reminder that AI adoption is not purely a technological question. It is also a question of trust, taste, and identity. The same technology that many interior design firms are beginning to embrace may be the same technology that a YouTuber's audience sees as a threat to the craft they admire.
Source: TNW | Apps News