There was a time, not so long ago, when the creator economy approached artificial intelligence the way one might approach a distant relative at a wedding: politely, cautiously, and with the clear understanding that boundaries would need to be respected.
That time appears to have passed.
A survey released by Billion Dollar Boy in November found that 87 percent of creators polled had increased their use of artificial intelligence in their content creation process over the previous year, with 86 percent planning to increase it further in the next 12 months. This represents something of a shift from the more guarded posture the industry adopted when generative tools first arrived on the scene.
"I think it's a lot harder to be super binary because it's just crept into our everyday so much," said Lucy Kruszynski, global head of brand at the influencer marketing agency Buttermilk, who noted that she was on a panel about creators and artificial intelligence in 2019. (The industry has evolved somewhat since then.)
The tools themselves have proliferated accordingly. CapCut, the video editor owned by TikTok's parent company ByteDance, now offers a suite of AI editing features. Adobe has positioned its Firefly product as an "all-in-one creator studio." And YouTube recently announced new features including video A/B testing powered by its Gemini model, which will indicate which version of a video might keep viewers engaged the longest.
It is this last development that has prompted some unease. The concern, articulated by several executives who spoke with Digiday, is that algorithmically optimized content could begin to feel, as Ms. Kruszynski put it, "very similar." Danae Mercer, a journalist who became a creator, said she had noticed an increase in what she called "AI speak," where "everything sounds the same, the ideas sound the same, the emails sound the same."
Brands, for their part, remain cautious about content that might be flagged by platforms as AI-generated. "I don't think brands care outside of, like, 'Is this content going to be flagged as AI?'" said Keith Bendes, chief strategy officer at Linqia. "That's the tricky part."
The question now is whether these tools will create a bifurcation in the creator economy — a split between those who use artificial intelligence to optimize for volume and those who resist it in favor of what Mr. Bendes called, simply, art.
"Not everybody is in this to maximize every metric to the nth degree," he said.
Which may turn out to be the most human observation anyone has made about machines in some time.
Original story published in Digiday: "The creator economy's stance on AI is shifting -- again"