It is difficult to stage a principled stand against something that has already moved into your living room.
Creators who once drew firm lines against artificial intelligence in their work have spent the last year watching those lines become less firm, and then rather blurry, and finally somewhat theoretical. The question is no longer whether to use A.I. but how much of the creative process to surrender to it — a distinction that sounds cleaner than it has turned out to be in practice.
The tools have become difficult to avoid. CapCut, the TikTok editing application, now offers a suite of A.I. features. Adobe bills its Firefly product as an "all-in-one creator studio." YouTube recently announced agentic tools for A/B testing and conversational editing, which will allow its Gemini-powered system to tell creators which version of a video will "keep people hooked the longest." (What could go wrong?)
A survey by Billion Dollar Boy in November found that 87 percent of creators had increased their use of A.I. over the preceding year, with 86 percent planning to increase it further. Lucy Kruszynski, the global head of brand at the influencer marketing agency Buttermilk, who appeared on a panel about A.I. and creators as early as 2019, noted that the industry is in "such a different place as far as morality is concerned."
"I think it's a lot harder to be super binary because it's just crept into our everyday so much," Ms. Kruszynski said.
The brand side remains more cautious, though the concern appears to be less philosophical than practical. Keith Bendes, the chief strategy officer at Linqia, suggested that marketers worry primarily about platform penalties. "I don't think brands care outside of like, 'is this content going to be flagged as A.I.?'" he said.
Several executives expressed concern that algorithmically optimized content could produce a flattening effect — every video eventually resembling every other video, hooks becoming interchangeable, nuance departing for quieter precincts.
"There has been a rush towards the ease of A.I., the convenience," said Danae Mercer, a journalist turned creator who uses the tools for administrative tasks but recently encountered a "no A.I. allowed" clause in a brand brief.
Becky Owen, the chief marketing officer of Billion Dollar Boy, wondered whether the tools might ultimately separate creators built for volume from those built for intention.
"Is this a great reset?" she asked.
It may simply be what it has always been: another technology asking creators to decide how much of themselves to keep.
Original story published in Digiday: "The creator economy's stance on AI is shifting -- again"