AI might flip the web right into a senseless click on machine — or gasoline a cultural comeback, says Substack’s CEO.
Chris Greatest, the cofounder and CEO of Substack — the web platform finest recognized for its paid electronic mail newsletters — mentioned on an episode of “The a16z Podcast” revealed Wednesday that AI might flood the web with “AI slop,” low-effort content material designed to maintain individuals scrolling.
“You might have a bunch of AI slop that sort of retains dumb individuals clicking,” Greatest mentioned.
However that the identical expertise might allow a really completely different final result: a “future the place there’s far more inventive leverage” for unbiased creators, he mentioned.
Greatest additionally mentioned that the actual bottleneck for media is not content material, however consideration.
“We have entered a world the place consideration is the scarce useful resource,” he mentioned. “We’ve received the conflict on boredom.”
“There isn’t any shortage of content material, however there’s an enormous shortage of fine content material,” he added.
With tech advancing, Greatest mentioned a lot of the web is being optimized purely for engagement, which he in comparison with “drug dependancy.”
“That aspect of the media goes to get supercharged,” he mentioned. “We’ve very subtle AI goon bots now.”
Nonetheless, he sees hope in an alternate future.
“The opposite function of media is tradition,” he mentioned. “That’s one thing that folks actually, actually need as effectively.”
Substack, which lets writers earn instantly from subscribers, raised $100 million in July. The spherical valued the publication platform at about $1.1 billion.
Greatest and Substack didn’t reply to a request for remark from Enterprise Insider.
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The AI period of social media
Social media platforms are already being swamped with AI-generated content material.
Enterprise Insider reported final yr {that a} wave of startups like Faceless.video and AutoShorts.ai are making it simpler for digital hustlers to chase views and money in on creator-rewards packages or affiliate hyperlinks.
For a charge, their instruments auto-generate and put up content material on to TikTok or YouTube — anyplace from three movies every week to 120 a month on a single account.
Faceless.video launched with a purpose to automate “your complete means of being a content material creator,” Jacob Seeger, certainly one of its cofounders, instructed Enterprise Insider.
“What historically used to take anyone tons of hours to dive in and learn to edit a video or search by way of Reddit and attempt to scour some good tales to seek out, now basically the platform handles all that for you,” Seeger mentioned.
The rise of “AI slop” can also be drawing consideration on the highest ranges. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump instructed reporters he believed a viral clip displaying a black bag being thrown out of a window on the White Home was “most likely AI-generated.”
“It is just a little bit scary, to be sincere with you,” Trump instructed reporters as he took questions on the White Home on Tuesday afternoon.
“The final place I would be doing it’s that,” Trump mentioned, “as a result of there’s cameras everywhere.”
