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A new generative AI video
platform will rise to supersede Netflix, Disney, YouTube and TikTok because it
will crack the two problems facing all streamers today: slow and expensive content
production, and clunky attempts to match content with consumers.
article here
Atin Gupta and Geoffrey Parker outline their argument
for Harvard Business Review, noting that streamers like Netflix are
spending billions on content but still churn viewers at an unsustainable rate.
They pick up on a remark by
Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters, who said, “If we deliver a Wednesday every
week, if we deliver a Glass Onion every week, we’ll get the
vast majority of those viewers back.”
Clearly, Netflix can’t yet
deliver a Wednesday (the hit Addams Family spin-off)
every week with its current production model.
What’s the
alternative? It could be TikTok and YouTube’s user-generated content creation.
“Although
that is relatively cheap and fast, it requires setting incentives that balance
three (sometimes conflicting) objectives,” the authors say, listing these as
retaining influential creators, motivating new creators, and retaining and
growing the viewer base.
“As
platforms in this space try to generate a sufficient volume of engaging content
from a relatively small number of popular creators, they are triggering
incentive wars,” they say.
For
example, TikTok allegedly engages in “heating” to manually promote videos.
YouTube Shorts, meanwhile, has lowered the bar for creators to earn revenue —
they only need 1,000 subscribers instead of TikTok’s requirement of at least
100,000 followers.
“No
human-driven platform has yet overcome both of these challenges,” they argue.
“However, a solution may exist. Generative AI will change what video content to
produce, how to produce it, and whom to show it to, ushering in an altogether
new kind of AI-enabled platform.”
The
characteristics of a generative AI streamer include the ability to generate
hyper-realistic, live-action video (with sound) almost instantly. Generative AI
streamers will be capable of outputting personalized content created in
response to text prompts by individual users at scale for billions of people at
a time.
Generative
AI will also know who watched for how long and who skipped which parts, as well
as the likes, shares, comments, searches, and all the off-platform discussions
about the video, while revealing the exact input used to create it.
“In one
shot, this scenario overcomes the two challenges with existing video platforms.
It provides a much more precise description of the video (the input text
prompt), and it greatly lowers the barriers to creation. It’s as simple as
typing out your imagination.”
Gupta and
Parker suggest that developing such a monster video AI would require an
ensemble of three AI programs. One that generates the video based on the text
input. A second that matches the video with the right viewers and a third AI
that uses the resulting engagement to guide creators on what to make next.
“The
generative AI driven video platform reduces barriers to value creation by
guiding creators on what drives engagement and showing relevant content to
viewers. At the same time, the reduced barriers and improved guidance in turn
enable the creators to increase the value they can create outside the firm.”
In this
scenario, creators are also viewers and vice-versa. The boundary is further
blurred if the viewer types in a search, and that input text becomes the prompt
for a new video.
“The
economic impact will be huge. Traditionally a small percentage of very popular
content on a platform has made up for a large percentage of less popular
content. A generative AI platform will supercharge the success of the popular
content because creators will be supercharged with the help of algorithmic
recommendations on what to make next. At the same time the much lower barriers
to creation will improve the profitability of the remainder.”
Of the
three existing platforms they mention – TikTok, YouTube and Netflix – the
authors think Netflix is most locked into its business model “and will likely
find it hard to dramatically change.”
TikTok they
believe is the closest to a Generative AI Platform in terms of business model,
capabilities, and flexibility to what we see coming, but is under threat from
regulatory scrutiny in the US, Australia and Europe.
YouTube is
in the most favorable position of the three, they find, partly because it has
the backing of Google’s AI capabilities.
All are at
risk of a super generative AI video usurper.
Of course,
we don’t yet have the technology to generate hyper-realistic, live-action video
from a text input, but the speed of development means this is only a (short)
matter of time.
Gupta and
Parker believe “it is highly likely that generative AI will power new video
content platforms that supersede or at least supplement the current
incarnations of Netflix, YouTube, and TikTok.”
Many other
creative domains in art, music, and the written word are in for similar
dramatic change and new business opportunities “for those who can see what is
ripe for disruption — or those who would harness generative AI to protect their
turf.”
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