Challenges & Opportunities of AI in the Creator Economy

[Music] thank you for that wonderful introduction I'm Cody comes future editor for the national I should just sort of clarify that does not mean that I will be editor at some point in the future I cover all things at the intersection of technology and societal Trends and there's not a better societal Trend it's on the tip of every tongue right now artificial intelligence you usually hear about it in terms of what it's going to do for mankind potential job losses potential job creation and when you have that discussion it's often talked about white collar jobs Blue Collar jobs no job is safe but what doesn't get talked about a lot is the content creators which in the post-industrial economy over the last 10 years has been sort of The Sweet Spot a lot of content's been created a lot of money has been made it first of all Casper as one of if you don't mind me saying one of the original YouTube creators you see artificial intelligence is there going to be a happy medium is that going to be the end of the content creator economy somewhere in between what are your thoughts yeah so I think with AI in general we didn't realize um that it would actually have such a big effect on the creative industry um however I don't think that touches the Creator economy in a negative light when you when you think about content creators the reason people love to watch them is the authenticity the back story the real people behind the content um so those sorts of creators I don't think will be affected I actually think in general Talent now need to build a personal brand or to build an audience so that they can be differentiated from when it uh when it comes to AI technology and even AI content creators themselves I do think the tools now that exist allow creators to create more content to come up with more ideas um and they also also allow the creators to use tools that didn't exist when I started so I started in 2010 when I had to make a a video I would I would have to physically write every single subtitle into that content now you just sick it in cap cuts and the AI does the work for you so I think it's very helpful and I think it's actually going to lead to more people like models more people like actors and so on becoming creators in their own right so that they can avoid what might come down the road with AI and so go ahead sorry yeah I mean I think uh that's absolutely right I think one other interesting consequence of this is as creating content becomes so much easier we're GNA get overwhelmed by huge huge volumes because everybody with an Instagram account a pulse and you know who is a model will be making content and what that's going to lead to is so much overwhelmingness that with AI generated content that we've published a blog post called the barbell in the Creator economy and AI where on the one hand you have all this AI generated content and we think on the other side you're going to have a return to real authenticity things that are provably not AI so whether that's somehow social platform being able to prove that things are not AI or for example a trend we're seeing recently is very very closeup vertical format of just talking to the camera with no captions very personal you know very little makeup and just really Direct in the camera kind of building a personal relationship and we think that kind of content is really going to proliferate over the next five years and perhaps no accident over the last few days Miriam Webster announced their words of the year as they often do those words are authentic Riz implode and deep fake let's focus on the two I think that you know we're going to focus on that's authentic and deep fake um you touched on authenticity right there are we going to see maybe for lack of a better word a backlash and it's going to be very organic and it's going to be uh calm videos if you will uh just really real videos or is that you know is this just sort of like autotune yeah so I think when you when you're thinking about just Tik Tok or YouTube or anything it's never a genre of content it's a platform for all kinds of content so if you're going to ask me what would be the most popular content I believe it will still be I don't like the word authentic but I think it will still be content that's curated and created over time by real people uh and I think someone like you know Mr Beast for example the biggest content creator in the world right now people like him for a few reasons one's because the content is really quick and exciting and engaging and he's putting a lot of money into it and it's high production value but two because of the real people behind it and I think that's crucial to remember and yeah the most overused word is authenticity and I I hate that word because I don't think it encapsulates exactly what I'm talking about but in general you you do need that level of real person when it comes to social media and that's why even Brands themselves like influencer.com when we're working working with Brands we need to remind them not to become robots they need to be like for example I don't know if anyone knows Ryan a um Ryan Air the worst airline in the world and everyone hates it because it's so difficult getting on but they took that and built this really authentic content strategy where they're like yeah we're really and uh you know we cost less and that's why you like us uh and and I think that really worked for them and they have a massive following because of it and I like Ryan Air now for some reason so Sasha you touched on this just a little bit the AI barbell on social media that was a very popular blog post but what does that mean to the lay person so it's this concept that as AI proliferates more and more and more of social media and we start getting overwhelmed by AI generated content for example we have an investment in a portfolio company called 11 Labs which is one of the most popular voice AI tools they've just raised rounded a billion dollar valuation it's really doing well and that's creating a huge huge inflow of AI generated voice content on social media our view on this blog post that we published that as you said you know hopefully some people read is that with on the one hand all of that AI generated content people are going to get AI fatigue so people don't just want to watch AI videos so for example I mean the perfect example is chess there's no human in the world that could beat the best chess AI never but people don't want to watch chess AIS play against each other they want to watch humans play against each other because we're humans and we're interested in human beings and we think the exact same thing will happen with content where even if you can make super entertaining AI generated content as humans we won't care and so on the one hand you're going to have all this super AI generated content that will be you know our kind of General Doom scrolling uh nighttime entertainment but on the other side you're going to see things that appr provably not generated by Ai and that's the barbell so you know the barbell has two strong n the side so what we think is probably going to be less relevant is just kind of authentic is content that maybe has a little bit of AI and Casper you have millions of followers on YouTube and that's just the tip of the iceberg you already pointed out that the world that you sort of blew up in is far different now than it was back then inevitably I'm sure that young people come up to you and they I I don't know if they say hey I want to be an influencer or I want to be a content creator but they say can I do what you did what if anything would you tell them in the world of AI yeah so I I think you're right it's changed dramatically since I started and um there there there was a lack of content and so I could kind of fill that void in a way with with fellow creators whereas now there's just an overwhelming amount of content so uh I think there's two questions there one if they want to become a Creator I think you should start on platforms like Tik Tok because it pushes people no matter how many people follow you it will push you if the content is interesting their algorithms are like nothing else you've ever seen and if you're making something that people are not scrolling away from it will be seen by a wide audience then over time you need to move that audience over to another platform because it's important to also be able to monetize and sustain that and as great as Tik Tok is because it's so easy to discover creators it's also very easy to be undiscovered um but in terms of if someone just wants to you know build a career in a world now with AI and how that changes how they should you know how they should educate themselves and so on I think it just goes back to like literally testing things going for things you no longer I think we talk about this a lot now um you now you know you no longer need to know how to do everything to start a business now you need to be an expert at something and use all the tools that exist to allow you to do everything else and so really get good at something in in particular and find your Niche and I think you could have a great career in a world with AI yeah and um the other thing one of the key things that's changed about social media is it used to be you know let's say 10 15 years ago that the social platforms were the same as the entertainment platforms so for example if you were on Instagram you would be scrolling through Instagram and you would see you know your old prom date from eight years ago next to the Rock next to one of your friends who's just got married next to somebody else who's famous an Instagram model for example whereas and that was like the original Paradigm for social media as we all experienced it that's really changing because now the feed is becoming more and more overtaken by professional creators who were designed to entertain you who obviously in most of the time you're not going to be friends with and so that's led to this and then obviously that's linked to this the rise of vertical and short form and the algorithm and everything like that and the question for us that we think about every day is is that going to continue forever in the sense that we're going to be more and more entertainment platforms uh in social media or are we going to see more of a return to friend-based social media and you've seen companies like B real and dispo and various others that had these kind of meteoric Rises and every say oh this is the time it's going to happen and then it collapses kind of within a few months but that's something we think about a lot as to whether it's going to go back to friends or not and I want to Pivot and talk a little bit more about that meteoric rise and fabulous fall that we're seeing so often now and probably you see it too in the VC and investment space how will AI be used for someone like you who might want to identify a promising product that you want to invest in or a promising idea that you want to invest in so we obviously have made some of the I'd say most high-profile AI Investments of late in the form of 11 labs and various others so we obviously are very bullish on AI we're very excited about it we're investing heavily in it but having said that there are elements of it that we're very negative on I think what we consider to make make a good venture capital investment is you know is fundamentally apart from the team and everything is the growth which AI has in great uh is is fantastic on but then you've also got the retention the gross margin and the uh customer acquisition cost uh in terms of retention and gross margin AI is horrible these AI companies everybody tries them even chat gbt everybody tries them and then it kind of tends to go down and obviously gross margin they have to pay for computes so it's a very very important open question as to whether these AI compan will make good businesses the current view is that they will I mean open AI is still raising $86 billion but we have to look very very carefully at these companies to see if they're actually genuinely high quality business that will last a test time and the video giant YouTube recently announced just a few weeks ago that they were going to start to require the disclosure of AI if it was used in the creation of videos on the platform almost like a cigarette warning what say you on that yeah I I mean so the other day I made a video uh on Instagram and I needed just someone to be like to say one single line basically was like Casper shut up or something I can't remember what it was and I used 11 labs to do that so instead of you know me putting on a weird accent to pretend to be someone else in my own video or me getting my fiance to do that character I used AI would I have to disclose that what would be the point of that exactly I think if it's the whole entire video and especially if you're potentially using someone's P I think that might be an important way to do it but I I think there's just so many what what I we need to also be specific on what type of AI you're using in your video um because there can as I said there can be deep fake Ai and then there could just be something that's helping your graphics on on screen yeah it's interesting I kind of take I I very much understand why they are putting this law in place as Casper does I mean it people it's not it's we're not at a stable equilibrium right now being able to to watch something online and not knowing if a real human has created it or a machine has as it tends to completely be impossible to distinguish need do that's not going to last there's going to have to be some kind of regulatory framework or at least social media platform rules to prevent that from happening uh because we're going to move to a stage where for example if you if somebody's you know caught on Photo doing a crime or there's a voice recording of them admitting to it they're going to be able to claim that that wasn't them and that is a real problem Society I think is no doubt in my mind that in the next 10 years there's going to be watermarking for both AI photos AI video AI audio all of it this has without a doubt from the media's perspective been the year of AI and I would argue that it's pretty well Justified given the ramifications and promise of the technology but oftentimes what happens is we will all Focus 110% of our energies on one topic and then something else will be happening over here and then we never saw it coming what are some of the under reported aspects in your opinion of AI or something that should be on our Horizon you want uh yeah I mean there's there's there's so many I mean there's everything from 3D and how it interacts with AI when you have like the kind of the Vision Pro and things like that which everyone got super excited for about a week about and then nobody's talking about it anymore it's about to launch in about two or three months uh I think that could be really really huge link to AI I think also um it's not necessarily an AI or non- AI thing but I think uh sometimes VCS are just so focused on one type of category and LPS are so focused on one thing and um I think at the moment people aren't as focused on in terms of the VC landscape on like consumer and consumer you know half of all returns has come from consumer businesses so we actually get kind of excited by the fact that not everyone's focusing on it and it's not necessarily the sexiest part of AI right now uh because it means that uh we're not necessarily uh in a hype cycle uh and we can take a long-term view on good companies I want to Circle back to you said something about using voice tracks and it's so easy to read a few lines into any of these apps now and it creates a voice that sounds just like you that's the potential for fraud also you have voice actors up in arms over how it's going to be used how they could be made to be redundant but that's only one side of the coin couldn't that also make it easier for you to potentially license your voice so that that's what I really was kind of going into I think we we have to be careful not to we we have to regulate as Sasha says and we completely agree on that because we don't want people like using these things as Bad actors but I also think we we can't completely shy away from this Innovation that's going to allow people to create content more easily and potentially be able to create money for themselves and revenue new streams in a way they couldn't before um I I wouldn't say I'm 100% sure it's going to actually benefit everyone more than it would have without especially from like the if say you're a voice actor and now you can um license your voice and you can be used 10 thousands of times without ever having to get out of bed will you make more money from that because the prices will come down for your voice versus if you actually did have to get out of bed and go and do a real live recording I'm a bit skeptical on that uh but I do think it will allow you know a whole new wave of creators setting up in their bedrooms and like I'm from South Africa from a small town I can now make content of a certain quality just with a cell phone without having to go out there and hire a voice actor and I think that's really exciting it's just when the uh the very wealthy and uh big businesses start using it in an exploitative way that I think is quite nerve-wracking I completely agree with that and it's a classic creative destruction I mean every type of innovation there is displacement of course voice actors will lose jobs of course they'll make less money but there's going to be 10 times the amount of job creation from just the pure volume of content that will be able to be created because of voice and other AI so yeah definitely really excited about that um and you know like you say voice uh voice actors will still be able to make a living if they have a very distinctive voice but realistically if they don't have a super distinctive voice and they're not yet getting going in their career it's maybe a better time to try something else and maybe try and leverage AI to kind of build a different type of career unfortunately that introduction we had I don't think could be replicated on the spot by AI so it was uh very well done it was authentic yes it was very authentic so proof of concept right there not yet at least it could maybe one day well someday for now we're okay is there anything else about content creation and AI that I'm not asking or I'm not making people aware of that you think people should know I think the one that we get asked quite a lot is about pure AI creators so not you know how to creators leverage AI but will people follow for example Le virtual Casper or or an entirely new Creator and our view is pretty much no right now just because uh because it kind of defeats the point of the Creator economy which is about I know there's authenticity intimacy whatever the word is but it's very difficult to get people excited there will be a certain percentage of the population that are into that they just will there there's some people who have all kinds of weird whether it's kind of a safe for work or not safe for work of that people will be into that but I think the vast majority of people follow creators for the for the authenticity yeah no I agree and and I think it almost relates to when when people were doing nfts and a weird you know they were like you know this is a virtual version of uh you know a piece of art and I think ultimately you know that worked for some people but a lot of people wanted the real authentic Arts um and and so yeah I think there's a lot of hype around AI creators and I think some some exist but it again it's it to me I'm like these are cartoon characters and there's a place in our world and in cinema for cartoon and people love it uh but then there's also a place for real real live action and I think that's what people want to see the majority of the time I think we'll leave it right there but this topic is not going away anytime soon it will ratchet up as AI developments unfold those are things that we cover at the national business finance technology check us out at the national news.com thanks to the both both of you for really enriching this conversation I don't think two other people could have better articulated these points today and really just ratcheted up the conversation so thanks so much we also want to thank hub71 for this wonderful space to have this conversation on this very important topic thanks very much thank you thank Cody