I Don’t Need AI in My Toothbrush

September 4, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The first week of September is a ramp-up month for tech news, and the Waveform crew has a lot to untangle. Marques, Andrew, and David start with a follow-up on YouTube's "engaged views" metric, which they first discussed the previous week. The divergence between public view counts and engaged views has only widened. A single MKBHD video now shows 4.6 million public views but only 3.2 million engaged views—a gap of 1.4 million. The theory is that the difference is small when a video first drops to a loyal subscriber base, but grows massively as YouTube pushes it to homepages and recommendations where people skim for a second and leave. The hosts note that this makes the YouTube Studio dashboard nearly useless for quick diagnostics; to see the old familiar numbers, creators now have to click through five or six menus into advanced analytics. One host asked YouTube's built-in AI to summarize channel trends, and even the AI appended a disclaimer about the view-count change. The practical upshot: for the next year, year-over-year comparisons in the dashboard will look inflated, while revenue will look proportionally lower, creating a confusing signal for creators and sponsors alike.

The Markiplier-GoPro Situation: A Perfect Storm of Optics

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Podcast Intro & Andrew's YouTube Bug** - The hosts introduce the episode's topics and Andrew reveals a bizarre YouTube UI bug.
2 (03:36) **Engaged Views Update: The Divergence Grows** - The hosts revisit YouTube's new "engaged views" metric, showing how the gap between public and engaged views has widened significantly over a week.
3 (12:17) **The Marques Brownlee / GoPro Situation Unfolds** - The hosts break down the controversial timeline of Marques Brownlee's GoPro investment, sponsored "review," and the subsequent merger announcement.
4 (18:51) **The "Line in the Sand" for Tech Reviews** - The hosts debate the varying ethical standards across the creator spectrum, from journalists to influencers.
5 (27:16) **iPhone Secrecy & The "Free Product" Fallacy** - A brief tangent on Apple's strict review embargo and the common misconception that free products bias reviewers.
6 (32:17) **Brownlee's Defense & The Shell Company Twist** - The hosts analyze Brownlee's live-streamed defense and the bizarre corporate structure of GoPro's new owner.
7 (38:33) **Google Find Hub Gets a Memory** - A new Android feature drop allows Gemini to remember where you put untracked items like a passport.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Marques Brownlee Andrew Manganelli David Imel

Show Notes

This week, Marques, Andrew, and David jump right into it by discussing the differences in YouTube views now that Viewflation has been happening for a full week. After that, it's all about GoPro, Markiplier, and what a "review" actually means. Then they talk about some new Android features before getting into the new AI Dyson toothbrush. We wrap it all up with some show and tell and trivia!

Links:

Philip DeFranco - Markiplier GoPro video

Markiplier - GoPro Mission 1 ILS Review

The Verge - Markiplier becomes GoPro biggest shareholder

Sonos Ace Ultra

Dyson CameraJet

Citizen Ani-Digital Temp

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