Are creators wise to sell their offcuts to AI companies?

Most will be familiar with the adage: ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’. Despite being a cliché, the saying lives on as it cuts to the heart of how individuals and companies perceive value. This is certainly the case when thinking about industries like entertainment which are subjected to relentless technological change. Emerging entertainment businesses powered by the latest technological trends tend to attract higher valuations in the eyes of investors if they can demonstrate how they will disrupt the status quo and become tomorrow’s market leaders. Meanwhile, today’s incumbents can see their value tumble if they do not have a compelling rebirth story that demonstrates long-term growth.

While some investors baulk at companies which cannot change quickly, there are also funds dedicated to consolidating distressed assets. This has been the story of local news organisations in recent years. Many have been the subject of mega mergers where costs are cut and functions centralised to maintain advertising profitability as newspaper circulation falls. This was helpful for the long-standing owners of such media organisations who decided the heyday was over when Google seized the classified advertising industry: it gave them an opportunity to cash out. Meanwhile, those that took over saw a bright opportunity to strike a series of deals that would consolidate the local news industry.

The creator economy’s trash versus treasure moment

Similar questions over value are now circulating parts of the creator economy. Bloomberg has reported that AI companies needing original content to train their algorithms are striking deals with content creators to buy their unpublished videos. Hundreds of content creators are reportedly being paid between $1 and $4 per minute of footage by the likes of OpenAI, Google, and AI tools provider Moonvalley. Scarcity is key in this fledgling market. Harder-to-obtain videos – such as original animations or footage shot from drones – command a higher price than conventional smartphone videos set for YouTube and TikTok.  

On the surface, it feels like a market made up of willing buyers and willing sellers. AI tools companies need a legally safe way to feed their algorithms amid creator concerns that some have scraped videos from social platforms without permission. Meanwhile, creators have an opportunity to diversify their revenue beyond platform advertising, user donations, and brand partnerships by selling unused footage. This is especially attractive to creators who are struggling to make ends meet as competition for audience attention intensifies. In the categorisation of these videos, they have ceased being valuable to creators but are extremely useful to AI companies that can extract value in ways creators could not.

Much like local publishers once did, AI companies are suggesting that these unpublished videos fit neatly into the ‘trash versus treasure’ analogy. And yet, the counter arguments suggest otherwise. There is a risk for creators that such deals could cause them to embolden a rival while eroding their unique appeal among audiences.

Protecting a creator’s unique appeal

To get to the heart of why, it is important to address what constituents as a creator’s unique appeal. Most creators are using the same tools, but it is their experience, treatment, talent, and personality that makes them unique to audiences. While it is a combination of all these factors that makes their content compelling, each element is also valuable in its own right.

This is important when considering the value of unpublished videos. While they may not contain all the elements needed to sing on social platforms, they are still likely to contain elements of the creator’s distinct aesthetic. This could range from how they treat camera speed or a filter setting, to the cadence of their voice: elements which may have also made their way into published videos.

And here in lies the danger: while the sale of one unpublished video may only provide a small window into what makes a successful creator special, the sale of hundreds or thousands of unpublished videos may provide an AI algorithm with enough inputs to join the dots and forge a compelling video in that creator’s field.

Prioritising original content

Put simply, creators should be wary of how much they could lose in exchange for a quick buck.   They would be wise to hold on tight to what makes them uniquely appealing as the AI revolution takes hold. Social platforms are already being subjected to a wave of automated AI content. Despite AI’s best efforts, a significant amount of AI content is likely to look and feel the same (especially as many AI models are trained on stock footage). A saturation of generic content could prompt audiences to pivot strongly towards the creators producing distinct output. While social platforms are aware of AI’s benefits, they also understand that a balancing act must be struck to ensure the most compelling content reaches its audiences. Instagram announced in April last year that it would be updating its algorithm to prioritise original content over accounts that either aggregate or create knockoffs of engaging clips. This could pave the way for the same treatment of generic AI accounts in the future.

With that in mind, creators should view their unpublished videos less as scraps that can be readily tossed to a hungry AI company and more like a notebook of uncooked ideas that form the basis for successful videos in the future. In this instance, a creator’s trash is also their treasure, otherwise AI companies would not see it that way.