As AI-generated content supply grows, is content surfacing/distribution or raw content supply the binding constraint on what audiences see?

Harry Stebbings · Sep 18, 2023

As AI makes content creation near-infinite, content discovery becomes the core problem for media

One long video can become a hundred short ones, expanding competition a hundredfold

58:39 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate

Ethan Mollick · Jul 31, 2024

The content-glut problem has already happened — attention is already scattered across a huge amount of content, before AI generation scales

Being a New York Times bestseller only takes around 6,000 hardcover copies in a week, showing how thin and dispersed audiences already are

59:54 20VC: Is More Compute the Answer to Model Performance | Why OpenAI Abandons Products, The Biggest Opportunities They Have Not Taken & Analysing Their Race for AGI | What Companies, AI Labs and Startups Get Wrong About AI with Ethan Mollick

Victor Riparbelli · Jan 15, 2025

In five years there will be far more AI-made than human-made content, but the more important question is which content actually gets surfaced

Content abundance already exists — most YouTube videos get under ten views — so distribution and surfacing, not supply, is the binding constraint

Scope: the YouTube view statistic is offered as an approximation

41:47 20VC: Why Scaling Laws Will Not Continue | OpenAI vs Anthropic vs X.ai: Who Wins and Why | How Far Will Model Providers Go Into the Application Layer | The End State for Models: Many Specialised or Few Generalised with Victor Riparbelli @ Synthesia

Harry Stebbings · May 22, 2024 · hedged

Because generative AI makes supply of content and outreach effectively unlimited, the value of that output may go to zero

An AI outbound rep can send a million messages a day, and podcast art or even podcast voices can be generated at will, so recipients get a thousand identical AI emails

Scope: stated as a personal worry

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Harry Stebbings · Jul 31, 2024

With an infinite supply of AI-generated content, the value of content falls and discovery becomes much harder — this is the main risk for creators

Infinite supply undermines both the price and the discoverability of any individual piece of content

Scope: Stated from his position as a content creator

59:41 20VC: Is More Compute the Answer to Model Performance | Why OpenAI Abandons Products, The Biggest Opportunities They Have Not Taken & Analysing Their Race for AGI | What Companies, AI Labs and Startups Get Wrong About AI with Ethan Mollick

Aaron Levie · May 22, 2024

Unlimited AI-generated supply will not drive value to zero; a power-law dynamic and creative destruction will sort winners from losers

The same objection could have been raised about tens of millions of iPhone apps twenty years ago; the world figures it out — things that don't work die off, people stop paying for outbound emails that fail, and what works takes off

42:38 Power law and creative destruction sort winners so value doesnt go to zero despite unlimited supply