AI is disrupting the content equilibrium
🤔 How will AI tools like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion impact content creation?
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a type of AI that is capable of generating new, original content based on a set of input data. Generative AI-powered tools can create realistic digital content with minimum instructions ("prompts"). This reduces the need for human creative workers or at least increases their productivity by reducing the time and effort in ideation, creating initial copies and variations, and creating personalized content. TIME magazine noted:
The latest wave of AI tools generally doesn’t require technical skills and includes image generators, video editors, podcast audio editors, email-reply generators, word processors, computer coding assistants, research-paper summarizers, marketing copywriters, and much more. OpenAI’s Dall-E and ChatGPT services give you a quick sense of the power behind these tools.
Will the costs of creating content reduce? Yes. Currently, getting a freelancer to write 1000 words would cost you at least $10 but the human-like AI writer (Davinci) by OpenAI will cost you $0.025 while generating an image using DALL·E will cost you $0.02. Companies can save resources by relying on AI to generate marketing copy, write articles, or create new designs, rather than hiring a team of people to do the work.
Inexpensive content means more demand supply. In 2021, adults in the U.S. spent an average of 485 minutes (eight hours and five minutes) with digital media each day. When the costs of producing content go down, it is the supply that increases far more rapidly than the already high demand. So whether you are producing a sales pitch for your product or any media for publishing, you are now competing with more content and more creators for the same attention.
The value now lies in content creation curation. While many meaningful things will be produced with AI content, the noise is expected to increase multifold given how cheap it is to produce content that is almost indistinguishable from humans. In this environment, the quality and reliability of the source, as well as the visual appeal and factual accuracy of the content, will become even more important for standing out. The demand for algorithmically curated content, or content that has been carefully selected and organized by a trusted source, may become higher than ever before.
PS. The idea of an AI randomly churning out content (like a monkey with a typewriter) without regard for quality or purpose is a concerning one, and highlights the importance of curation and careful consideration in the creation of meaningful content. The resulting output could be compared to the barrage of spam emails that clog up our inboxes. Oh no.