AI’s creator economy revolution will accelerate if it can join the dots

While generative artificial intelligence (AI) is in its infancy, many people are optimistic about the technology’s potential. Organisations are deploying AI to improve productivity – and creators and general consumers are following suit.

AI naysayers have been quick to criticise the technology for lacking use cases, but streamlining processes is currently something AI does well – hallucinations aside.

To that end, AI start ups are arguing that integrating AI into workflows and organisational systems can drive efficiency and increase output.

AI apps have repeated this mantra to secure billions in investment, but they are pitching the same things to creators to get them on board.

Convenience and speeding up content creation make AI enticing for creators

For creators, streamlining content creation is an enticing value proposition and a powerful message. Creators want to produce more content but do not have the time, owing to consumers’ always-online nature and the sheer number of social platforms.

In fact, 38% of video creators and 40% of music creators saytime constraints is biggest challenge when it comes to content creation. (MIDiA Researchs 2024 Video Creator Survey and MIDiA Research’s Q2 2024 Music Creator Survey).

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So, how can AI help creators solve their time-related challenges? In video, AI apps can now cover every step of the creation process– from ideation to post-production –  all without a camera:

·        AI ideation for video content creators:

o  AI ideas generator to hone vision (vidIQ)

o  AI storyboard generator for planning (Boords)

o  AI image generator for storyboarding(Midjourney)

o  AI script writing support (ChatGPT)

·        AI production for video content creators:

o  Image-to-video for actioning storyboard (LumaAI)

o   Text-to-video to create footage (Runway)

o   Text-to-speech for voiceovers (ElevenLabs)

o   Text-to-audio for music and SFX (Suno,ElevenLabs)

·        AI post-production for video content creators:

o  AI video upscaling to improve image quality(Topaz Labs)

o  AI video editor for collating footage and audio(Adobe Premiere Pro, VEED)

AI video creation tools are currently fragmented, but creators want one-stop shops

While undeniably impressive, the whole creation process outlined above involves nine different companies’ services. The market is highly fragmented across a myriad of providers, from established creative companies like Adobe to new entrants like Runway.

Making creators bounce between different software – an inconvenience–  flies in the face of AI’s convenience use case.  

Creators (and their marketing / production teams) already use an array of different platforms to stream content, upload it, and promote it across different channels.

Creators are already maxed out in the number of programs needed to run smoothly, so adding more apps to the mix can be a time-sink that risks undoing AI’s productivity benefits.

Generative AI companies are working on a one-stop shop for video creation

Fortunately for creators, efforts are underway to centralise AI-based video production. For example, Canva’s AI image and video generator tools bridge the gap between video creation and graphic design workflows:

Still, what creators really want is for individual AI tool providers to consolidate, enabling creators to streamline their creative process on both a micro and macro level.

The AI tool goldrush is truly underway. And, as always, some prospectors will go home empty-handed. There are almost certainly more apps available than the market can bear.

AI tools are expensive too, with economies of scale needed to make business models work.

Just like the metaverse and blockchain before it, the investment tap for AI is currently flowing. However, investors can easily turnoff that tap if:

·        Products fail to deliver

·        A new exciting technology wins over investors 

·        A market leader emerges

Spoiler: a market leader always emerges, and new technologies and trends are always on the horizon.

Either way, consolidating AI tools to join the dots between workflows may cause a seismic shift towards AI adoption among creators.

Whether or not AI will live up to its lofty expectations remains to be seen, but some of the tech world’s biggest and brightest minds are working to make it happen.