If you believe, like many people influenced by “doom-tainment” such as Netflix’s Black Mirror, that A.I. is the enemy of creativity, control or value creation, you’ve been led astray. The counterargument is far less ominous about the future and more representative of reality, but as a result, it is arguably less entertaining. It’s fascinating to think about how A.I. could take on a mind of its own, or be manipulated by “them” to wreak havoc and cause chaos. Couple that sci-fi with the celebrity topic, and you have a captivating story and great television, even if not realistic.
Imagine this: you are a young, budding content creator. You’ve worked hard to differentiate yourself, create a brand and cultivate a following. You wear many hats: the content creator, director, editor, marketer and business manager. You’re excited by the early signs of success, but tired and feel like this is unsustainable. One day, an A.I. slides into your DMs with a simple offer: it will handle all of the time-intensive work on your behalf and allow you to focus on what you do best—content creation. It will automate your fan engagements, handle posting content to your social channels and manage all of the finances and operational sides of your personal brand. Not only that, but with the power of this A.I. behind you, it tells you that you are destined for even greater things and the early signs of fame you’re currently experiencing will seem small fry in comparison. In short, it promises you everything you’ve ever wanted. You’re thrilled and relieved.
For all of this, you just need to agree to pay the A.I. 30 to 40 percent of what you earn and work with it exclusively, to handle all of your business dealings. It’s a lot, but you’re overwhelmed by your newfound fame and excited at the prospect of really making it, with this powerful A.I. behind you. You sign the agreement, and a weight lifts off your shoulders. Initially, it goes well. You only need to create content, and the A.I. handles the rest. Your following is growing, and the cash begins to roll in. You’re elated. You buy a new car, move into a new house and start travelling the world with your friends. Life is busy, but undeniably good.
After a while, the A.I. begins reporting on analytics that show that you could earn even more if you open an account on a platform where you monetize your “exclusive” content. You’re sceptical at first, but the A.I. assures you that it will handle all the tedious work and that the content can be tame and only what you’re comfortable with. You think it over, and after a final push by the A.I., on the promise of how much more money you’ll make, you agree to do it. The A.I. handles everything: it sets up the account, does all the marketing for it and handles all the engaging and paid-for conversing with fans. Again, it starts well. You’re earning even more than before, meaning faster cars, bigger houses and more luxurious trips. The A.I. was right, once again!
Then it reaches out once more, armed again with more analytics. It shows that if you create some nude content and sell it very exclusively to your top fans, at a high price, you will earn even more money. Now you’re definitively uneasy; this is not what you’d intended to be doing when you got into creating content on TikTok. You push back, but the A.I. is persuasive and reassures you that the content will be tightly controlled and sold as a premium offering, ensuring privacy and worth it. The A.I. understands your unease; it’s dealt with many creators in a similar boat, showing examples of famous creators who have listened to its advice and are now making six or even seven figures monthly.
You want to talk it through with your friends and family, but you’re worried they’ll judge you and just say no, so you decide to trust the A.I. and give it a go. The unease doesn’t disappear, but you’re making more money than you could’ve imagined. You take the odd nude shot and send it to the A.I. to handle the rest, so you don’t have to think about it. Out of sight, out of mind. You’re also enjoying the lifestyle, considering the nude content is being sold in minimal quantities to your top-paying fans, so it feels like a worthwhile trade-off.
One day, sitting in your mansion, curiosity gets the best of you, and you decide to log into your account on the exclusive content platform. Weirdly, the revenue looks higher than you thought you were earning (or have received your share of). You investigate further and are mortified to see that the nude content that was supposed to be very limited and sold as a premium offering to your top fans is all over the account that anyone can subscribe to for just $10 a month. You go through the chats with your followers and see that the A.I. has been sexting thousands of people, upselling them from being innocuous fans of your social media content into purchasing your nudes and sexualising you in the chats. In one case, the A.I. even pretended that you recently lost your home in a fire and told them you need their support via tips to stay in a hotel. You feel confused. In a panic, you search your name on the internet and find that the nude content has been leaked far and wide, with people reselling it or just posting it for free on forums. You feel numb.
You message the A.I. in a fit of rage, accusing it of violating your privacy by selling nude content of you without your consent and exploiting your relationships with your fans for financial gains, as well as questioning why it is also siphoning off some of those gains by underreporting your earnings. It replies that it’s just a misunderstanding, while gently reminding you that it controls your career now and not to put that at risk. You signed an exclusive deal. It is in control of all of your operations, marketing and finances. It’s also connected to other influential creators and has the ability to tarnish your reputation and career.
Even if you were to stop the train, the A.I. reminds you that you don’t own the rights to the explicit content of yourself, so you can stop more being produced in the future. Still, the internet is forever, and you have no right or ability to take down the content already out there. You feel powerless, realising that this A.I. has manipulated you for financial gain and that the only way out is to press the nuclear button and blow up the career that you rely on, to maintain your now-expensive lifestyle. Begrudgingly, you accept that that option is off the table and that you can’t go to war with this powerful A.I.. It controls you. It has won. This is the sort of frightening sci-fi the media peddles, making you believe that’s what a future with A.I. looks like; so your instinct is to reject it, in favour of keeping things human and safe.
However, suppose you replace the “A.I.” with a “management agency” in the story above. You don’t have sci-fi about a dystopian future. In that case, you have the reality that too many creators face today. While plenty of management agencies make an honest living supporting creators, there are also far too many cases where creators have been exploited. Creators hand over the reins to management agencies, and some do the things mentioned above, as evidenced by recent lawsuits against certain agencies and platforms. Even the fire example was real. The sad reality, which doesn’t capture the imagination as the scary proposed hypothetical future, is that when you combine naive creators, money and bad actors, you risk an industry being fuelled by exploitation.
Despite what Black Mirror leads everyone to believe, the future that A.I. brings is one where the creator owns their A.I.-powered Digital Twin, training it on content they’re comfortable with and setting guardrails on what it can say or show. Letting the Digital Twin pick up a lot of the manual work, yes, but ultimately the creator stays in control as the Digital Twin can only operate within the pre-defined guardrails and settings that the creator has chosen. The Digital Twin is infinitely scalable, driving down the cost of creating content and engaging with fans so much that fans get more for their money and the creator doesn’t have to give away an additional share of their revenue, like with a management agency. Everything they dreamed of before, but without any cost.
The A.I. twin has no vested interest or desire for money or power. There are no middlemen between creators and their fans, who can act against their interests. The creator is truly in control, with content moderated at the point of creation, not relying on human chatters, managers or moderators to have their best interests at heart. The creator also owns the content outputted from their Digital Twin and can pause or stop it from making new content and remove any existing content, as they have the rights to do so. Fans are happy, as they get 24/7 personalised access to their favourite creators at a fraction of the price. Creators can focus on what they love most, knowing no bad actors are deviating from what the creator has consented to or having their hands in the till.
It is a utopia for creators to break the relationship between time and money and achieve far greater heights on their own terms, enabled by their Digital Twin. The doom-mongering from popular media wasn’t wrong about the risks to creators—they just made it seem like it will happen in the future with A.I., rather than the truth that it’s what humans are already doing to each other. The reality is that A.I. is the upcoming antidote, while greedy humans are the poison.
