Ai Video and the Future of the Creator Economy

0:01All right. So earlier this month, we hosted our first ever Press Publish NYC, a gathering of 400 plus creators in New York City. and it was powered by Microsoft Copilot. Now, one of the coolest parts about the partnership with Copilot is that Copilot was the official note taker of the event. So for everyone sitting there, listening to all the speakers, they didn't have to take notes because Copilot recapped and summarized everything and gave everyone there the biggest takeaways. If you weren't at Press Publish NYC, you can still get access to all of these takeaways from all of the sessions. You just go to thepublishpress.com and you can read them.

0:36And thanks again to Microsoft Copilot for powering Press Publish NYC. One of the biggest stories to come out of the creator economy this year has not been from YouTube or Instagram or TikTok, but it's been from OpenAI. OpenAI's new app, Sora 2, is only one week old and it's already taking the internet by storm. The artificial intelligence-powered app allows users to put themselves or anyone else in scenes, real or imagined. It's being called the new frontier. I got Sora. Somebody send me an invite code. I downloaded Sora. And let me tell you, I've now scrolled Slop Talk. And anybody who scrolls Slop Talk for fun needs to re-examine how they interact with media.

1:17Now, Sora 2 is a text-to-video generation model. That's not really anything new. What's new about the app is this feature called Cameos. When you open the app, you can FaceTime with it, and it essentially builds a model of your face and voice. And you can use that in your own creations, but also you can allow other people to use that. That's created an explosion of absurd video across platforms. We've seen videos of Jake Paul doing his makeup. We've seen videos of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman doing ballet. It's a very bizarre time when it comes to video. And another difference of this app is that there is a feed of 100 % AI-generated video that you can scroll through.

2:00So in this episode of The Colin and Spirit Show, We're going to talk about the implications of Sora 2 on the creator economy. We're going to talk about what it means for audiences online, what it means for creators, and end with some predictions on what text-to-video could mean for the future of creators.

2:22So you have not made your cameo yet, right, Colin? I have not. I've been a little bit hesitant. Why? I don't know. No, it feels so black mirror to me to open up the phone, deliver these three numbers, look left, look up, and then all of a sudden have a replica of myself. It just, I'm not there yet. I will get there because I want to do cameos with you specifically. I want to see what does it look like when AI, Colin, and Samir are having a conversation. It's very bizarre. I think another thing that's super interesting to me is that because this is created by OpenAI, it has your ChatGPT history.

2:57So when I do a simple prompt about myself, it oftentimes loops in stuff about the creator economy because it's aware that I'm Samir from Colin and Samir. And it's really fascinating to explore this like history of yourself getting now embodied through video of yourself. And scrolling through the Sora feed is one of the strangest things ever. So let's zoom out and talk about AI video itself has been around for a while. Like the past couple of years, we've seen AI video. I've always felt like there is very little use case for it. Yeah. And everything really up to now has looked very glossy and smooth and kind of like plastic.

3:44Like you can kind of call it out, right? When you see something that's generated with AI, it feels almost too ethereal, like some sort of sci-fi fantasy. But when you open up Sora and you see Sam Altman, you're kind of like, wait, I think that is Sam Altman. Oh, wait, no, he's getting pulled over. And like, there's a cat that's talking. Okay, that's AI. I think every company has rolled out something AI powered video, AI generated video, something that pitches to creators how much easier it is to create. And I would say mostly when I've looked at that or any other creators looked at that is like, okay, yeah, it is easier to make an image of a panda drinking coffee or a video of a panda drinking coffee, but I don't understand how I would use that.

4:29This is still to me, one of the first times where I like, I don't really understand yet how to use it, but it's become a little bit more clear. So before we get into like the creator implications, I just want to talk about audience implications. Cause I think there's a lot of fear when models like this come out and when people see AI generated video, they're like, the immediate response is, this is going to take creators' jobs. There's going to be feeds full of AI slop. And that suggests that audiences want to watch this. So let's talk a little bit about the implications from audiences on the internet.

5:08Like, is this content that people actually want to watch? I believe in the current moment, it is novel. And that's why you want to watch it, right? Because you have an understanding, especially when you open up Sora, what this content is, how it's made, and that dictates the experience for the audience, right? There's an extra layer of storytelling on top of every video you watch, because you know that it was made with something new that you've never really seen before. but I will say as I watched on day one I said this to you there's something that Mr. Beast says all the time like the filter for his videos is that you need to create something no one's ever seen before so a video of a cheetah racing an f1 car it's like I've never seen that before I'll click on that I found that the Sora feed was similar it like felt like things I'd seen before because it looks like it's all shot with a phone but then all of a sudden you realize oh I've never seen this before because they're using generative AI to, you know, have a dog be pulled over, right?

6:08And it's like a body cam from a cop or SpongeBob is doing something that clearly SpongeBob would never do. So I think I wonder if that lasts for audiences, right? Because it is hard to show someone something they've never seen before. It's really hard. And there's more content than ever being produced and put out onto the internet. It's very hard to create something that's worth someone's time that they've never seen before. And this, when I watched on day one, I was like, okay, this is at least today a way to show someone something they've never seen before. But have you gone back? No, but I have an adverse relationship to the short form feed in general right now.

6:44I think I'm a little bit different. I don't want to spend that much time in short form feeds. I think it's like the matrix. You get sucked in. I believe a lot of it just steals your attention. You don't remember it. and I have too many regrettable minutes across all short form feeds at the moment. Yeah, so I - So when I think about watching an AI version of that, I'm like, I just don't believe in this current moment I have time or interest in it outside of studying it for the purposes of talking about it. So Sora is not the only AI short form feed that launched. Meta launched an app called Vibes, which is 100 % AI generated content.

7:19My belief system is pretty firm that nobody actually wants to watch this stuff for a long period of time. The session times cannot be very long. My session times are not long. And I also think we're talking about an incredibly niche thing right now about watching a Sora feed. Like that is not some large amount of people and it's not ever going to be a large amount of people in my opinion. I think the Sora feed to me feels very similar to the rise of Twitch and people playing video games on Twitch and people watching other people play video games on Twitch. So what I've noticed is I do spend a lot of time generating video.

7:58I think it's really interesting. And it does feel like a video game. It's a very interactive form of media. You don't know what's going to come out on the other side when you type in, hey, have me and Jake Paul driving in a car together. Like, I don't know what that's going to look like or like what the output's going to be like. But it's exciting to see whatever that's going to look like. Or me and Sam Altman. It's exciting for you, the audience of one. Exactly. It's not necessarily exciting for the masses. In the same way that when you are playing a video game by yourself, it is fun for you to explore the video game world and see what happens next and try and win the game and try and beat the level.

8:35And I think when you're looking at other, at least for me, when I'm looking at other AI generated content right now, it's like, oh, that's an interesting way that that person generated that output. it. And I'm probably, you know, I'm 36 years old. I'm probably on the other side of this, of just like being more curious about it from the creation lens and just like, what are people doing with this technology? But I think that's one element of the audience's experience that we're probably overlooking whenever we talk about AI generate video, that it's more fun to create it than to watch it. And that's actually a really important thing because people having fun creating video is time spent.

9:15And there's a finite amount of audience's time on the internet of what people can pay attention to. If it is fun to prompt video and to spend time prompting video, that likely means there's less time in the day to actually go watch videos. But I think we should really look at it in the same way as video games. And we should explore this as like the evolution of video games. The other side of this is memes and the evolution of memes. The amount of Jake Paul I've seen in the past week is insane. You talked about this very early on, I think in our episode with Reid Hoffman, that maybe we'd wake up one day and go, oh, Leonardo DiCaprio is like the face of the day that everyone is creating video with.

9:57That happened. That happened. It was Sam Altman first and then it was Jake Paul. Yeah. Yeah. It made me think that I kind of went straight to monetization actually once I saw the Jake Paul stuff and thought okay let's say an actor is promoting a movie maybe they open up the actor's likeness for a day and everyone gets the opportunity right or you can like charge to use someone's likeness to create with them and this idea that to follow your thread of it being the continuation of video games that actually everyone gets turned into a video game character right the same way that if you're playing like, you know, a Madden game or whatever, like FIFA, you're actually playing with real people.

10:42Right. And that maybe that's just something that's going to be opened up to all of us. And there will be different ways to monetize ourselves as video game characters. Yeah, I want to stay in the audience's experience because that that we're going to get there about creator opportunity and creator experience. But I think the question is like, is this presently novel or is this a peek into the future properly, right? Like how fun is it to see our feeds taken over by Jake Paul doing absurd things? Because presently it does have a lot of viewership. Does that last? I believe so. I think it lasts because I think it is the evolution of memes.

11:26Right? I think that's why it lasts. I do think it's more complicated than the traditional meme of let me take a photo and put new text on top. That is actually the lowest barrier to entry. And that's why memes, I think, spread so quickly is because you can make them so easily. I don't believe that it's super easy. You still have to have like a good amount of creative thought and have to learn how to prompt the right way to make that Jake Paul meme. I don't know if it's as low lift, but I do think it is the evolution of memes and it will stay around. I mean, even when you open up Sora and you look at how people are using IP, like Spongebob again, or I saw the, you know, alien from Alien vs.

12:04Predator getting pulled over in a cop car. Like using IP that people know, whether that's a human or a character, that's when it's really easy to create a meme because everyone has a base understanding of who Jake Paul is or who Spongebob is. And then you can layer on top of, you know, it the funny situation. And that's always what memes have kind of been. And I definitely believe that we will continue to see things like this. I just wonder at what point does it go past being novel and the tech gets so good that you actually can't really tell because we're so close to that, that you can't really tell like, is this AI Jake Paul with Sora or is this just Jake Paul?

12:45So there was a horrific helicopter crash in Huntington Beach over the weekend. And I was scrolling TikTok and I see this video. And my initial instinct as I scrolled past it was, oh, that's Sora. And I kept going and then there was another angle of it. And then I was like, wait a second, is it not Sora? And then I went back to the original, I looked at the comments and everyone was debating if it was AR or not. And I was like, man, we've arrived in this place where our feeds, which used to be really verifiably like human experience, especially if you think about like 2020 and COVID when the creator economy really picked up.

13:30Largely, it was because we were sharing human experience with each other through social feeds. In five short years, we've gotten to a place where we don't know if it is a real experience or not being shared. And I think the default will be skepticism. Of course. The default for me was skepticism in seeing that everyone in the comments. You actually don't trust any of the video that you see, which is a weird and perhaps scary world to be living in where you actually no longer can fully trust video. Because even take that helicopter crash, all you needed to believe it was true was a second angle and a third.

14:07Right. That's not hard. That's not hard. You could just generate that. Yeah. So that's where when we talk about audience experience, I think the question of trust and credibility and belief, it really like these platforms are now in a place where that may no longer be a part of the creator equation in like a sea of videos where like the base level is cool. I come here because these are real people telling real stories. That's crazy. That is a crazy change from the audience's experience from five, you know, 10 years ago when we started on YouTube. Like we tell the story all the time, but the first video we shot was into a MacBook.

14:46And there was no edits. We just said stuff into a MacBook and then pressed upload. That's a really raw experience of human expression, just like human communication, that I think we've accelerated so much in the past 12 years to the point where now, if I saw a video like that, I wouldn't know. I think one of my other questions now is you mentioned like pre-existing IP is interesting because there's a base level understanding of what it is. Jake Paul is interesting because it's Jake Paul and he's doing something Jake Paul shouldn't be doing. Is there going to be net new IP generated from Sora? Like there's a big debate in Hollywood right now around how close the copyright infringement is.

15:26So if you prompt Sora and say, give me a superhero in a black cape saving someone. It looks a lot like Batman. It's not Batman, but it looks a lot like Batman. And there's concerns in Hollywood, of course, about that. But it also brings it to question because it doesn't exactly look like Batman. It kind of looks like Batman, but you could just generate a new IP from Sora. And then if you really scale that out and you're like, everyone is using this one IP, you know this one character it it's a possibility that maybe like a new internet native character gets born not it's not so dissimilar from little michaela or vtuber or anyone or even dude with sign like let's look about let's look at static memes yeah there are a lot of characters in the world of static photo memes that have become that's true ip character become internet characters and IP.

16:22So I think, yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. So now that transitions us into the creator experience, right? Because we are now as creators, first of all, like, you know, this, this, I, I think this pushes us to a place of where we were when this all started of like very real human expression, at least for me, as I've been thinking, you know, a lot of this has to do with the last couple episodes we've had on this feed with our episode with Casey Neistat saying, we've over-indexed on the economy part of the creator economy and under-indexed on the creator part. And that like, there's almost this lack of art on the internet.

17:04And art is expression and human risk, right? Like this risk of creativity. I assume on the creator side, that will have to exist for it to be interesting, right? Like it will have to exist in your content, some feel of that like very real human expression for your content to be in the street. That might show up in lower fi content. That might show up in other ways. One way I think it's showing up significantly is through the rise of live events. Yeah, I believe that's how it shows up is live events and live content. Because if you look at the Sora feed, the style they led with immediately was cell phone video and body cam video from police.

17:49It was pretty raw, unfiltered content, at least the style of it, the recreation. So I think creators will lean into that, but I don't believe that leaning into it in video form is necessarily the way to prove that it's like verifiably human and has that feel because I think generated content will also feel that way because that's what we like to watch. so i think live events will be the only verifiably human experience being there in person and then perhaps watching it on the stream i think for me as a creator who now we just hosted our first big live event 500 people in new york with press publish nyc like that was really fun and seeing 500 people in the room when you're on stage and saying something and making people laugh and making them, you know, react and seeing aha moments and seeing people connect.

18:39Like that, that to me feels like a new part of our creative expression that I want to go very deep in right now and like continue to expand. I mean, granted we're here audio only because we're traveling at a live event speaking. It's been a huge part of this year. We've seen an uptick in events. We've seen creators like us produce our own events. Even as I'm looking at next year, I'm like, I want to go on tour. I want to go to cities and see people and talk on stage. I mean, look at a very human level, it has a massive impact on our lives and our experience day to day to speak live, whether it's in front of 10 people, 15 people who are going to be speaking at colleges over the next couple of weeks.

19:19So that has a huge impact on us. We've talked about this before. You know, we have a YouTube short with 40 million views. I don't feel the impact of that. I asked a creator last night we were talking to who has a short on YouTube that recently got 500 million views. And I said, how did you feel the impact of that? And he goes, not at all. Yeah. He goes, I didn't. I didn't immediately. And isn't that amazing? 500 million views is astronomical. But I think specifically for a short form piece of content, doesn't feel the impact of that. I believe that's a long form piece of content that people are sitting with.

19:56Of course. Yeah. You feel the impact of that. Yeah. I mean, we were talking about how much you feel the impact. Today, we're going to speak to a room of 600 people. We're going to feel it in that room. When 600 people are in a room, you feel it. And I do think like the internet is not going to feel the way it used to feel. It already doesn't feel that way. And I think what matters from a creator perspective is that speaking today in front of 600 people who haven't heard us speak before, the likelihood that we will introduce, let's say 100 people, which would be a lot into our community who are interested in us that want to listen right to more of what we're making i think is really high and it may be more people than that who knows they have a great experience maybe we get half of those people 300 people are now fans of ours i don't believe that a youtube short with 40 million views is going to bring a large number of people who are lasting members of our community yeah so it may actually be a more impactful way to build your brand to go essentially door to door.

20:52Yeah. Yeah. Talking to people because they remember the experience they had with you if they liked it. So I think, you know, the other piece of the creator equation that we should talk about is opening up your cameos. This concept of saying, like, anyone can use my face. Now, of course, when you open up Sora and the experiences, you have these checkboxes. You can say, only I can use my name, image, and likeness. people I know can use my name, image, and likeness, or anyone can use my name, image, and likeness. I believe there will soon be a fourth option, which is brands I approve can use my name, image, and likeness, which is similar to, you know, anyone I know.

21:33Or, you know, it's basically saying like in the way that on Instagram right now, we make a short form piece of content, we're partnered with a brand, we give them the rights to boost that piece of content if they want, right? They can use that piece of content in their marketing. They can put a spend behind it and they can get that piece of content. It's no different. It's just pay to use my likeness in a certain way. Right. So that to me feels unbelievably obvious that that is where this is going next of, hey, my likeness is available. If you can submit a request, it costs this much money for this much usage.

22:07You can have me pitching athletic greens or some other podcaster pitching athletic greens in Instagram reels and stories and it's direct to camera. You know, however much you use it, I get a percentage just like a national TV commercial. I get royalties from it. And I believe audiences will care if they know how it's made. Some of the audience will care. But if they don't know how it's made, they won't care. And most likely, I don't know if they will know. Well, they might not know. And that brings into question, you know, how should people know? How shouldn't people know? So like, is it even possible to control that the way this is going?

22:45Yeah, it's, I don't know. I don't know because also like, you know, Rich Roll, a friend of ours, he had an experience where this happened, but without his consent, where a brand used his likeness to, you know, essentially make an ad and it was indistinctual. And, you know, what he said is it really harms his credibility, of course. you know so I think if this happens where we can open up our likeness then on the other side of that to protect it there has to be some ID to it right some ID that says hey you know if my name agent likeness is being used without my knowledge and my consent then there has to be some way for me to take that down or to engage with it this by the way content ID what I'm describing is what made YouTube what it is today, I think is a really important thing to recognize in the history of YouTube.

23:40Content ID is what made the traditional media companies feel comfortable coming onto YouTube. Content ID allows traditional media companies to find out if other people are uploading their content and then take it down, monetize it, or monitor it, just track the data. Yeah, leave it up. So like the NBA, if a bunch of people are using NBA footage, like they were not comfortable with that on YouTube. The rights of their content was very, very important to them. And the ability to monetize those rights is the whole game in most media companies. So YouTube had to create a system to acknowledge that and to figure out a way to make movie studios and IP holders feel comfortable joining the platform.

24:25That I think is the next thing that probably needs to happen across every platform so that everyone with a brand feels comfortable or every human feels comfortable in a space where presently other humans can prompt your image or generate video of your image. But who knows in the future, I don't want to go too far ahead, but like there might not even be humans prompting that. maybe i'm too far no i don't know what i mean like where it might just be self-generating of like oh this person's really popular and so this agentic ai model is just going to generate images of them over and over yeah i mean i 100 believe that that's where all of this is heading the first step is going to be all of these platforms doing what sora did and allowing people to create with a likeness but down the line it's going to be hey here's a new feed that we are generating for you with everyone, different people's likeness that have opened up their likeness because we know based off data what we think you'll find interesting.

25:33And so you open up the app and we just generate it. There's no doubt in my mind that that's where it's going to go. And it's just going to be eventually AI that's self-improving. I do find it hard to wrap my head around if that's interesting. And maybe it's the same way that people our age when Instagram came out were probably They're like, why is it interesting that people are posting photos of like their day and their lunch? And, you know, it was kind of unbelievable at a moment in time that people would be so interested in other people's day-to-day lives, right? It was also unimaginable that people would be interested in other people playing video games.

26:12And, you know, presently, I find it unimaginable to be interested in an AI-generated feed. until it's no longer an AI-generated feed and it's just the feed and you can't tell. I mean, you know, when IGTV launched, it was its own standalone app and then it came in, right? Like, this is how it works, is you launch a sort of standalone feed and then it's no longer a... You think we're really going to, like, in the future, be like, oh, let me check the AI feed. No way. That's just the way it's launched. One of my predictions is it may, and let's get into predictions now of what this means, But one of the predictions is it could go the other way, where there's an opportunity now for a social platform to be 100 % human and to come out with that branding.

26:56Right? Like a niche, more like boutique platform that's like, we will only be human voices. And again, when it's coming out of my mouth, it sounds insane. But people would probably pay attention to that. Be Real had that moment, right, in time. It was like, I have no idea if Be Real still exists. Yeah. But I think there's probably an opportunity, whether it's a flash in the pan or not, or it can remain interesting or not. I think if there's something that says, hey, we are the 100 % human voice platform, and it's like a boutique small company, I think that's interesting. And that maybe we may start to see feeds pop up like that.

27:33Not 100 % AI generated, but obviously the inverse of that, of just like we're going to keep all of that out of our world. Yeah, that feels really boutique to me. It's very boutique, but it might exist. Like the indie coffee shops of social platforms. Yeah, the third wave coffee shops. If there's the Starbucks and the McDonald's, which is all the major platforms, there likely will be a rise of these third wave indie boutique shops. I think especially that parents would maybe be more comfortable letting their kids use too. Yeah. Is a factor of like, oh, why don't you use maybe? I don't know. It's not like they're not.