Why AI Is Eating The Web3 Creator Economy

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses how AI is disrupting the web3 creator economy, particularly with the recent advancements in AI-powered tools like NVIDIA's GET3D that can rapidly generate 3D objects and virtual worlds. It explores how this technology could make many existing creator tools and platforms obsolete, and how it is leading to a divide between creators and those using AI to create.

🙋 Q&A

[01] Why AI Is Eating The Web3 Creator Economy

1. What are the key advancements in AI that are disrupting the web3 creator economy?

• The article highlights the recent progress in machine learning and deep learning, with the emergence of tools like DALL-E, MidJourney, Stable Diffusion, and NVIDIA's GET3D.
• NVIDIA's GET3D AI-powered tool can rapidly generate 3D shapes with high-fidelity textures and complex geometric details, disrupting startups that have developed tools to manually scan objects for populating metaverse worlds.
• The ability to instantly generate textured 3D shapes could be a game-changer for developers, helping them quickly populate virtual worlds.
• With the help of another NVIDIA AI tool, StyleGAN-NADA, it's possible to apply various styles to an object with text-based prompts.

2. How could these AI advancements impact the promise of a democratized creator economy?

• The article suggests that the promise of a democratized creator economy, where people can make money from uploading their own images to sell, may become a thing of the past.
• Tools like MidJourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion could soon allow users to enter a text prompt and have AI generate a metaverse from it, fully realized 3D and immersive environments.
• This could make existing creator tools and platforms like Quixel's megascan library redundant as a business.

3. What is the emerging role of "prompt engineers" in this AI-driven creator economy?

• The article mentions that "prompt engineers" - people who understand how to manipulate the phrases needed to get the best initial results from AI tools - will likely emerge and command a decent price, at least for a short period of time.
• However, the article suggests that these "prompt engineers" are not true creators, and that AI will be leaving them in its wake as it dominates the industry.

4. How is the creator community reacting to the rise of AI-generated content?

• The article mentions that there is already a backlash, with Getty - a major visual media conglomerate - announcing that it will be banning artwork created with artificial intelligence, citing copyright issues.
• This is seen as a divide happening between creators and those who use AI to create, with the potential for casualties across the industry.

[02] The Future of the Creator Economy

1. What is the author's prediction for the future of the creator economy?

• The article suggests that within the next 2 years, we could have a plug-in for Unity or Unreal Engine that can procedurally generate virtual worlds that users can move through and interact with, simply by using a phrase or a few words.
• The article states that the final step in this journey is just telling the AI the result you want with little else involved, and the user can then tweak the output into shape or leave it as is.

2. How does the author view the role of traditional creators in this AI-driven future?

• The article suggests that AI will be "leaving those people in its wake as it dominates the industry", referring to traditional creators who would normally get involved in projects like the sci-fi short videos created by Fabian Stelzer using AI tools.
• The article sees AI as "democratizing creativity" but also "removing huge swathes of traditional creators" who would have previously been involved in such projects.