Seems like the issue is more that YouTube is flagging videos from real channels as "low effort" (aka ai slop). This is a long time coming considering the sheer amount of 40k channels that are just AI content farms, but in usual YouTube fashion they are delegating the decision to chatbots and jeets so a bunch of real channels are getting caught in that net.
They will probably start reinstating real channels soon enough though, "youtube is killing 40k channels" is such an exaggerated title that it honestly leaves me with even less sympathy for them.
This is indeed what Valrak is talking about in the video and it isn't like the first channel brought up is making a living off of it with those numbers, but it is just a guy reading fanfic like an audiobook so I can see how youtube could have flagged it(seems Valrak also got him to read some of his stuff with "Builders of Ruins")
https://www.youtube.com/@AVoxintheVoid/videos
There's been other lore channels that have gotten demonetized for the same or similar reasons, but they've gotten it back and Valrak bringing attention to it would be a way for youtube to get some jeet to take another look at it.
Now looking at the 2nd channel Valrak brings up, it's a lore channel but got copyright claims and a strike, not flagged as AI. Of course looking at the first video I clicked on "Sevatar: The Traitor Who Spoke the TRUTH" 2 fucking hours of this damn near 3 hour video are the guy reading extended excerpts from multiple GW books.
His Angron video? Again, 2 hours of excerpts from GW books. Ok that's recent, lets check his Guilliman video from a year ago... and it's got probably an hour or more of excerpts from GW books scattered throughout it. Ok, the guy that runs this channel is a fucking idiot. There's a difference between the occasional quote, and reading multiple pages of a book(multiple times) and not expecting GW to take issue with it considering GW takes down channels re-posting audiobooks or making their own audiobook versions of GW's books.
Ok lets check out the third channel, Grimdark Narrator. Looks like a lore channel
Holy shit this guy sounds like a Romanian AI... monotone but that doesn't make it AI. The problem he does have however is that multiple sets of videos on his channel are series of reading GW(and even some battletech) published books as audiobooks again and he's not even hiding it using some of the book covers for his thumbnails. This guy is a fucking idiot. Zavant is a book from 2002, Battletech Mercenary's Honor is a short story from 2022. Guardians of the forest is from 2005. Hell, the oldest shit on his channel is him reading Starcraft Speed of Darkness from 2005, 13 years ago and then turning it into daily uploads of him reading copyrighted shit. He's lucky his channel has survived this long.
So yes, one of the three channels that Valrak brought up I'd say has a legit complaint being flagged as AI. But the other two are apparently run by morons that just thought they could read copyrighted shit and be able to make money off of that.