AI Micro Dramas, Generative Media, and the Future of Creativity

25:05Justine Moore:I think my view on that has been it's super hard to say what is AI or not. Like I remember when people asked this question, I saw a Reddit post like a year and a half ago where like Steam or one of the game marketplaces was requiring games made with AI to be labeled AI. And one of the developers was like, well, I used like a tab complete model and cursor when I was coding parts of this game. Like, does that mean I have to label it as an AI generated game? And I think Steam's intention was like, oh, if it's AI generated assets or images or music or whatever, but like, it's just such a slippery slope of like, oh, you know, what everyone assumes AI means.

25:54Justine Moore:Like people will look at that. Many people, I think, will look at that and assume this is fully AI generated. And in many cases, it's like a collaboration between human and some sort of model. I think my instinct is like the vast, vast majority of content will end up being partially AI produced or AI edited in the future. So there's probably no point in even labeling it because that's just going to be the default. That said, I am surprised on platforms, especially like Instagram, how many people don't recognize like clearly an AI video. So I know the social platforms are, you know, putting more disclosures and things like that over that sort of stuff.

26:37It's becoming much harder for sure on what has been AI generated. I mean, for videos, I think it's hopefully fairly easy to, you know, figure out. especially for like newsletters right i saw this um stat the other day someone put together where if you look at the top newsletters globally on all platforms something like 20 of the top newsletter writers all of their content it was like 80 of their content is ai generated and then it's like you get to that phase where it's if you're a top newsletter but it's ai generated content i'm not sure where where you stand with that i think i have a controversial

27:18Justine Moore:take on this, which is I don't actually care if like the person is choosing to read the content and the person is choosing if they find the content meaningful or not and whether it resonates with them and whether it kind of speaks to something in their life. And so it's sort of in the eye of the beholder. Like I think folks who are, and we've already seen this, like people who have a popular newsletter and have like pivoted to just putting out purely claw generations that are like not really in their voice and like don't make a ton of sense get called out for that like as they should. But I think there are some people who, you know, I've even been surprised by it, find a lot of meaning and really resonate with certain things, certain AI outputs that people get by, you know, going back and forth with Claude or GPT or whatever model about a certain question and then publishing it.

28:11Justine Moore:I think some people get like really offended when they see AI written output, I just sort of, you know, skim it and decide, is this meaningful to me? Do I want to read it even if it has an AI tinge? Is there still some element of sort of, I can understand what the author wanted to say and why? And if so, I'll still read it. Yeah, my personal take has also changed fairly recently, where if it's a creator who I respect, and I'm going to that creator, because they're sharing the latest tech trends or it's the latest startups or what's happening like in healthcare, for example. I don't really care.

28:48If I'm still going to get the same insight as what the creator is trying to say, great, I don't mind. Maybe six months ago, would it have been different?

28:57Justine Moore:Why do you think your viewpoint changed on that? Because there's two points. One is so many of these creators are using these AI models and tools anyway to help them with their work, which I think is totally okay, right? They're very small teams and I guess they need as much support as they can. And secondly, it's just where the world's going. As long as the information I think is accurate and what the creators are saying is still accurate, then I think it's okay. I agree. I mean, I think the thing that I don't like to play the devil's advocate is, I don't know if they still do this, but for a while, both Claude and GPT had this terrible habit of being incredibly long-winded in like a way that like no human would be when explaining something.

29:48Justine Moore:And so you could clearly tell if something was AI generated because it would take three paragraphs to say like one sentence worth of confidence. And that is like very annoying. But I don't know, a lot of what I do when I write blog posts and stuff now is like it's really hard to start from a blank page. And so often what I'll do is I'll create some sort of outline of what I want to say. I'll give it to both Claude and GPT. I'll see what angles they come up with. I'll paste them both in a doc. I'll take parts I like from each of them. And then I'll rewrite a bunch of it myself. And, you know, the end output is probably like 70, 60 to 70 % written by me, like 30 to 40 % written by AI.

30:30Justine Moore:But I'm actually like the process of writing is no longer as painful because I'm not starting from a completely blank page. We're exactly the same. We use all of the models to check for spelling mistakes, which I think is always a good thing. There's always one or two things we should miss out, right? We ask each of the AI model to rate the newsletter edition out of 10 based on all of our previous content. So if Claude is saying 6.5, Gemini is saying 9, and ChatDuty is saying, I think it's only 8.59, you know perhaps that you're on the right track for something, right? If it's like all of our designs, we do these beautiful like market maps 70U all of those are human generated for now but we just ask it to rate it what do you think of this design how should we make it a bit clearer should we move like the box around when you've got 200 companies on a market map it does get a bit hard but it's actually a super useful sparring partner on what great content could look like yeah I find it super like I've also given it sort of presentations that I'm giving at our like GP meetings or wherever.

31:40And it's really,

31:41Justine Moore:sometimes when you get deep in writing something or creating a presentation, you have so much context in your own brain that it's hard for you to imagine, does this make sense to an external person looking at this for the first time? And I find the models are really good at reviewing something fresh and saying like, there is no coherent narrative underlying this or like you really need to move this part of the presentation before these other parts because without it the rest of the parts don't make sense for someone who's not super deep in this space and I find that to be super valuable and I think will actually really improve how a lot of people communicate because that's a really hard skill to be able to do on your own.

32:25The hardest part also for creators like us and maybe you agree is there are so many tools out there deciding which ones to stick with and deciding which ones to try out every week. It's opportunity costs, it's just time. At the end of the day, you just got to decide, I guess, what works best for you.

32:47Justine Moore:It's hard because you get on something that works well for you and then something else comes out the next week that you want to try that looks even better and then your original product upgrades. and so I don't know it's it's difficult I think we I try to I think I'm lucky that like you know since I'm investing in a lot of early stage stuff it's helpful for me to use both all of the early stage products but then also know sort of what the incumbents which at this point are like the open AI and the anthropics and the googles are are doing and releasing so I can know how the product experiences actually compare we have a lot of founders who listen to the show and I think a useful question would be to talk around what are the hardest parts of building a generative media type of company from a startup point of view?

33:37And yeah, any characteristics you've seen there on all the hundreds of companies you've met?

33:44Justine Moore:Yeah, generative media, I think is a great space. And it's also a really competitive space. So I think to me, the hardest thing right now has been figuring out who you want to serve and how you're going to be differentiated, largely because it's gotten pretty expensive to train foundation models that compete with folks like OpenAI and Google, not as much Anthropics, they do sort of less on the media side. But there's now, you know, a number of startups that have raised a bunch of money across different modalities, as well as the big tech companies that are training models here. And so from a research perspective, it's harder than it used to be to, you know, train a new image or video or audio model from scratch and like be a competitor in the market, which is not to say folks shouldn't do it.

34:33Justine Moore:But I would say the bar has raised in terms of what folks expect in terms of differentiation, what your model can do that others can't, that sort of thing. I think a lot of folks are now trying to compete at the app or workflow layer. And at first, the applications for these models were incredibly simple. It was like, you know, a text box prompt input, and then you would get the output. and now there's a bunch of great services that host a ton of different models and they all offer, you know, text input to output. And so most people don't want to be competing on just offering the lowest price for every model or, you know, offering the fastest inference or things like that.

35:19Justine Moore:And so they're really trying to think about how can I serve a certain user base better than anyone else can? Like what can I build product-wise? How can I create features that really resonate with a particular audience? How can I go deeper into a particular type of creator or professional's workflow so that they have a real reason beyond price to stick with my platform? I would say that is the major challenge that everyone is thinking through right now. And it's worth probably having a point of view on that if you're starting a new company today in the generative media space. There are so many incredible creators out there who you can sell to, but also figuring out, you know, where the opportunities are because things are changing all the time is the hardest part, right?

36:06Where do you think the untapped opportunity is for a founder to build a defining company in this category?

36:15Justine Moore:I mean, I think most of the companies in this space initially targeted like the AI native creators, you know, folks like us who were early adopters of all of these tools, who were using and sharing and posting about it, who were reachable on platforms like X and Reddit. But I think there's a massive market of other people that are largely untapped, who are less technically sophisticated, who don't know every single tool out there. And in some ways that's a benefit because if you get them on your tool and you get them to have a sticky workflow there, like they're less fickle, they're less likely to turn and go to whatever they see the next day.

36:50Justine Moore:I think there's a lot of opportunity and consumer that's honestly untapped. Like sort of the social layer of generating and sharing stuff is still almost entirely done on the existing incumbent platforms versus, you know, creating really fun and interesting and compelling new playgrounds where consumers can make and share this sort of stuff. I also think types of content, like micro-dramas are a great example where you need really specific things. Like, and I saved ideas of characters with certain voices, save sets, like a sense of the right timing and pacing for a micro drama in particular, like that sort of knowledge and those features are going to be different than a general video product.

37:32Justine Moore:And then I think there are also a lot of opportunities in like vertical industries, things like architecture, things like design, marketing and ad industry is huge and is just starting to adopt AI. And so I think going into those markets that are not necessarily like the most AI native is an enormous opportunity right now. It feels like there are so many opportunities founders could go towards. I almost feel, is there going to be like a roadblocks equivalent for AI microdramas maybe? All of these AI tools where you can create ads in like a couple of minutes, I think it's been so interesting to see.

38:11We mentioned earlier around like presentations, creators have to create slide decks and partnership agreements and stuff. that's kind of all now being done. I still think maybe where there is opportunity is actually just a typical creator stack, like running a creative business and just like all the day-to-day stuff you have to do, like reaching out to podcast guests, potential sponsors, partnership agreements, like we still have to do this for it. And it feels like maybe there is still some opportunity there, but it's pretty hard. For sure.

38:45Justine Moore:I mean, yeah, there's so much work that is done And beyond just the pure content creation side of it, I think a lot of the things you're talking about is more sort of the business, the tasks that today humans have to do, whether it's, you know, research and outreach or whether it's creating and sending invoices or reviewing legal contracts or things like that. And obviously, you know, big companies have a bunch of people who do those things. But for most creators, like they can't afford to have big teams who are taking care of all of that for them. And so every minute they spend on that sort of thing is a minute that they can't spend on creating content, which is generally what they like to do.

39:22Justine Moore:So one of my takes is that AI agents are going to be particularly powerful for individual creators and small businesses just because they're so much more constrained time-wise and resource-wise. And it's going to be a massive step function improvement for them when they can spend much more of their time on their creation, their business, whatever they like to do, and less on all of this administrative and logistical type stuff. Have you tried any cool personal AI agents that you're really excited about? And do you have one? This is going to sound like I'm shilling for an investment, but I was actually a user of this months before we invested.

40:03Justine Moore:There's this new product called Town. It connects to your email and your calendar. And what I really like about it is it ingests all of this information about you and then it proactively suggests things it can do for you. So most AI products, you're going to it and saying like, hey, can you set up this recurring workflow and describing exactly how it's done? Town looks at everything you've done and creates the description of what it needs to do and then asks if you can do it. One great example is I often get warm intros from other investors or other folks to companies. And one day Town was just like, hey, I notice every time you get one of these, you like send an email back thanking the referrer, you move them to BCC and then you loop in your EA Lauren to schedule a meeting.

40:54Justine Moore:How about I just do that for you every time one of these warm intros you've agreed to comes in? Or like I've noticed Friday nights at 11 p.m. you are forwarding in receipts that you get to Navon, your guys' expense provider. How about every time you get an email that's an invoice or receipt, I just auto forward it in for you and then sort it so it's not clogging your inbox. I think things like that, I'm really excited for them to reach more people. They just announced a fundraise, right? Yes. This is almost what I feel we've been waiting for for the last two years. Yeah. And it feels like consumer tech intersecting AI is back.

41:36Consumer tech has always been, there's no opportunity. The returns have been super bad, but it feels like it's back. where are you most excited about seeing consumer go next?

41:51Justine Moore:I always say it's super hard to predict consumer. It sort of can only be observed. Just because it's like consumer behavior is, it's very difficult to say like, you know, even if you look at things like a TV show or music or a movie or a game, like what is going to be the next major hit? I think you can see early signs though, just like, you know, you can see early signs of like an indie songwriter, you know, rising up in TikTok and then eventually they become a big star. You can see signs from early adopters of these sorts of products of what the future might look like once everyone can get a hold of it.

42:28Justine Moore:Like if something is a magical enough experience for the early adopters, it will likely continue to grow and spread. I mean, that's why we invested in town. Like me and a number of other people on the team used it and we're just like, I think we see similar things for like texting, being able to text AI agents, for example. Like a lot of people do not like having tons of apps on their phone and having to open an app and, you know, wait for it to connect and then send something to AI and then wait for the response to come back versus, you know, you're just on your phone and you're lost or you don't know when your next meeting is or, you know, you get some important email you missed and you can text your AI assistant or it can text you with products like Poke or Ollie, which is doing this for more kind of family and household management.

43:18Justine Moore:And I think we saw the first wave of a lot of that kind of stuff with like OpenClaw, honestly, and the Hermes agent, where really technical people were setting up super interesting things and finding a lot of value from it. But the vast majority of users are not going to like get a Mac mini or install the like amphetamine thing on their Mac to keep it running all the time. and go through the whole process of installing some open source project to set up their assistant and connecting the API key. Like there's still so much friction around that sort of thing that we have not yet reached the point where it's come to everyday consumers and a cool, well-packaged product.

43:57Justine Moore:So I'm super excited to see that wave kind of reach everyday people. Yeah, and we have to remember a lot of these typical consumers, they're not that technically savvy, right? Outside of San Francisco, I mean, they probably don't know how to have their open claw, right? So when that becomes much easier, massively widely adopted, that's potentially the breaking point. Yeah. I think we saw something similar with generative media, honestly, where it's like before it required these really specialized skills to be able to make a good image or video or design or something like that. and AI has really democratized that.

44:39Justine Moore:And I think we're going to see something similar for code. Like what a lot of these agents are doing is they're writing some sort of code or some sort of ongoing workflow for people and running it for you. Just something that the vast majority of people, like me included, cannot do well on their own. It's such an exciting time to be building. If you were to go and build a company tomorrow, what category would you build in? And I'm sure you've thought about that or you've got some ideas you would maybe, you know, noodle on other weekends? You know, I've never had the bug of like, I have to go start a company.

45:14Justine Moore:I think like in general, the good advice is probably start a company in a space that you know a lot about and you're really passionate about. So for me, it would probably be either something in generative media or consumer agents. I just, I think there's so much potential to build the, to bring the power of these models to consumers in consumer friendly interfaces. Like we have not at all reached sort of saturation in terms of the number of products that people will use. we're just so early. Like we don't even have kind of friendly, accessible product experiences, let alone like good brands or like great marketing for a lot of these AI products.

45:57And so I just think that's like

46:00Justine Moore:a massively underserved space right now. I think there's a ton of really exciting things happening in B2B and on the infra side and sort of in research. I'm not a researcher or like I've never been like a kind of core B2B software person. So those are not my areas of expertise. So I would probably lean more on the consumer side of things. There are also just so many incredible founders out there who people can like draw inspiration from. Any founders you really admire right now who are just building incredible things? There's so many really fantastic founders right now. I think the 11 Labs founders, I will give a shout out to just because we did the Series A and a bunch around since.

46:42Justine Moore:So I've had the opportunity to work with them a bunch over time. And I think with all these AI products right now, you sort of have to find like an initial wedge where you can get an attention and initial user base. And for 11, that was with a lot of, you know, random audio use cases. Like, you know, we talked to them a few weeks after they launched and it was like people making like voiceovers for games or like people dubbing audio books in like obscure languages or sort of interesting long tail use cases where you're like, I wonder what this is going to be as a big company. Like, I wonder who's going to be using this.

47:21Justine Moore:And then I think kind of co-developing, like the research, the product, and the go-to-market, which is super hard to do, so that they're all moving forward, so that as the models themselves get better, they have these new product interfaces that can sort of capture and harness the value of the models. And then they can go and sell those to customers, which at first was like largely consumers and prosumers, but now is a lot of traditional enterprises and expanding across categories, like starting largely in the creative ecosystem media, which is still a really big space for them. But then also exploring like where are the other places voice is used and as voice agents became more popular.

48:05Justine Moore:So to me, they're sort of like, how do you execute very well across all of these different categories at once. Staying focused on the core, kind of keeping the models getting better and better, but also not letting product or go-to-market fall behind so that you can really take advantage of the opportunity in front of you. I have so much respect for them, Matty and Pietro, two Polish founders from this tiny little country in Europe. They just crossed$500 million, I think, in annual current revenue and they're only a few years old. So for respect to them. Yeah, no, it's remarkable working with them.

48:46Justine Moore:They're like, I think we knew that they were very special, but it's also super fun to watch founders mature from like a team of maybe like 10 people when we invested to suddenly like hundreds of people at this company that they've created from nothing. Like it's when you kind of follow something like that, it's just truly remarkable. more. You know what's really annoying? I had a very similar idea to 11labs about five years ago. There's a tweet somewhere out there where I said at some point, how cool would it be for every creator in the world to translate their content into any language using their voice?

49:21And at the time I was at another VC fund and 11labs came along. So hats off to them. I'm really excited to see what they go next.

49:29Justine Moore:Me too. Hey, Justine, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. We've cover so much. I feel like now is the greatest time to build, to be building, but also anyone who's just interested in new media, give it a go and get building some AI microdramas. Totally. Yeah. I cannot wait to see all of the incredible content that's going to be coming out over the next few months. See what happens. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to this episode of the A60Z podcast. If you liked this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review, and share it with your friends and family.

50:08For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Follow us on X at A16Z and subscribe to our sub stack at a16z.substack.com. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. This information is for educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell any investment or financial product. This podcast has been produced by a third party and may include paid promotional advertisements, other company references, and individuals unaffiliated with A16Z. Such advertisements, companies, and individuals are not endorsed by AH Capital Management LLC, A16Z, or any of its affiliates.

50:45Information is from sources deemed reliable on the date of publication, but A16Z does not guarantee its accuracy.

51:01Thank you.