The Creator Economy on AI Steroids

Hi everyone

This is Lore, the techno-optimist newsletter. 

Every week, I share 5 interesting things to help you thrive in the age of AI.

Thank you for being a part of 20,000 techno-optimists and growing. Feel free to forward this to your friends if you feel the urge. 🙏

P.S. Watch the latest episode of The Next Wave with Robert Nickson!

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Creator Economy On AI Steroids

Ever since ChatGPT launched, I’ve been telling friends who asked me for advice on what to do in the Age of AI two things:

1. Buy NVIDIA stock(not financial advice!)

2. Get involved in the creator economy. AI is going to put it on steroids.

That’s why I got active on X last year, growing my account from 5k followers to 64k, and now doing The Next Wave podcast with Matt Wolfe and HubSpot.

As AI makes execution easy, three big things remain: great ideas, great taste, and great personalities.

Peter Thiel recently said something similar, stating that individuals who excel in articulating ideas will surpass those skilled in mathematics, and our cultural values will shift to prioritize these communicators. I couldn't agree more.

The Age of AI will be dominated by Creative Generalists.

Possessing a broad set of creative skills and a strong online personality is crucial to thrive in this new era.

One aspect of this most people aren’t thinking about is that as AI content is everywhere, people will want to see real humans more and more. At the same time, those in the creator economy will have an easier time creating software and other products because of AI. This means lots of money for creators.

And actually, it’s already happening.

Tyler1, a famously jacked 6’5(possibly 5’4? Who knows) shit-talking League of Legends streamer with over 7 million followers, launched his startup, Backseatgg, this week.

It puts his personality into the game while you play. He talks directly to you and gives you advice, including telling you when you suck.

I believe this is the start of a megatrend, with creators not just getting sponsors but building their own tech products.

As more creators get their hands on AI tools and it becomes easier to generate software with AI agents, we will see an explosion of wild ideas and new experiences that were never possible before.

Imagine an AI voice bot with Alex Hormozi's entrepreneurial expertise guiding your business decisions, a Sam Sulek bot reminding you to do your cardio, or a Paul Graham bot punching holes in your startup pitch.

My key takeaway from all of this is that, as annoying as he can be, Gary Vaynerchuk was right.

The most important thing you can do for your career or business is to get involved in the creator economy or to align yourself with creators and support them.

My current tier-list for the creator economy is: YouTube > X > Everything Else.

X is the easiest place to start, so I suggest just going there and writing what you think as often as you can.

And with AI mass-producing tons of mid-content, it’s smart to put your true personality and thoughts out there. As uncensored as possible.

Put the human soul into your content.

Creative Generalists

(Share this on X)

Create Your Own Netflix With AI

This week, The Simulation, a Silicon Valley-based startup created by people who worked at Pixar and Oculus, announced Showrunner. And it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in AI.

Showrunner allows users to create virtual worlds populated with AI characters. You can set up the initial prompts, define the characters, and then let the AI take over, creating unique storylines and interactions. You can choose to interfere as much or as little as you want and then sit back and watch how things unfold.

Today, I talked with the founder, Edward Saatchi, and now I’m even more excited.

They’re aiming to turn Showrunner into the Netflix of AI, where users can create shows, watch shows created by others, or eventually create shows entirely by AI.

The first sandbox world they’ve created is sunny Sim Francisco, with a more dystopian vibe, Neotokyo coming next.

They have a private Alpha right now, with over 1,000 people creating their own stories. Edward is going to give me access soon so I can try it out myself.

Edward said the surprising thing to him is that people love putting themselves and their friends into the show. That makes a ton of sense to me. I would love to put my friends and family in a sim, put us all in hilarious situations, and share clips with them.

This will be huge if he unlocks a viral loop in which celebrities and influencers create episodes and share clips online.

Jason Evanish, a reader of Lore, had a great idea, too. Imagine if Showrunner could eventually license top IP, and you could create new episodes of your favorite shows. Even if they were in South Park style, I wouldn’t care. However, I assume they’ll have many styles to pick from, including anime, etc.

Imagine creating new episodes of Seinfeld, Star Trek, X-Files, or Firefly. It would be so addicting.

I’d love to change the last season of Game of Thrones…

This all makes me wonder: if, in the long term, I can make my own show that feels more interactive, like a game, do I need Netflix?

The Next Wave with Roberto Nickson

In this week’s episode of The Next Wave, Matt Wolfe and I spoke with Roberto Nickson, one of the top voices in AI & Tech on Instagram.

We discussed:

• His mega-viral Kanye West AI video from last year started much of the conversation around AI Music.

• Why he thinks humans will continue to be an important part of creative work and art.

• His time interviewing Mark Zuckerberg and why he’s very bullish on Meta’s chances to compete with OpenAI and Google.

I hope you’ll check out the episode! It would also help if you subscribed to The Next Wave on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify. That’d make HubSpot and me very happy.

Things I’m Watching / Reading / Thinking About

• VIDEO: I Tried All The AI Glasses (So You Don't Have To)—Video from my co-host Matt Wolfe that shows the good, the bad, and the ugly of all the AI glasses out there.

• EBOOK: Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead—Written by Leopold Aschenbrenner, an ex-Open AI employee who was fired for supposedly leaking information. I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to do so this weekend. I hear that it’s great.

• PODCAST CLIP: All-In Podcast Clip - Thinking a lot about this clip. With elections coming up, I hope everyone can be more like this. Being okay with friends with different political views and learning to respect one another. Bonus points for having my favorite video game in the background, Zelda.

• MUSIC VIDEO: Eminem - Houdini - Created with the help of AI by Metaphysic.ai. This video has over 41M views already in just a few days.

Things Are Getting Better

That’s all for today. Please consider sharing the newsletter with your friends if you think they’d enjoy it. 🙏

Please give me feedback on Twitter. I am still figuring out the best format for this newsletter. Which part did you like? Dislike? Do you have other suggestions? Please let me know—just tweet @NathanLands.

-Nathan