生成式网络的兴起

The internet made distribution free. AI makes creation free. The platforms built on that new supply will be generative networks.

Some of the biggest companies the internet produced were networks built around a unit of media: 140 characters (Twitter), a photo (Instagram), a long-form video (YouTube), a short-form video (TikTok).

Each of these networks was supply constrained by how many people could make its unit. Anyone can write a tweet. Fewer people can make a good video. Almost no one can make a game, an app, a song or a film, so those never became networks. They remained industries.

AI unlocks that latent supply. It erodes the delta between what someone can imagine and create. Someone with taste and no professional training can now make an app, a game, a song, a short film, a business, a character, or a virtual world.

On a generative network, every output also becomes an input for someone else. Every song can be remixed, every game modded, every film recut. That creates a different kind of network effect. Old networks grew by adding creators. Generative networks grow by adding creations. Every new piece of media is raw material for the next one.

The biggest opportunities are likely where the gap between professionals and everyone else is widest, and demand already exists. Games, apps, music and film all have huge audiences and have always had very few creators. Just as YouTube and TikTok created careers that didn’t exist before, generative networks will surface the next game designers, musicians, and directors.

We’ll also see entirely new units of media. They’re hard to imagine today because they don’t fit the vocabulary we use to describe today’s media. It’s possible many of these emerging networks look more like multiplayer video games than traditional social platforms.

The opportunity for new networks is to surface this supply with the best AI tooling, then become the place where it lives and gets remixed. As Chris Dixon put succinctly back in 2015, users will come for the tool, stay for the network. And importantly, new networks have a structural advantage over incumbents. A playable game, a living world or a remixable song doesn’t fit a feed built for scrolling. New units will need new containers.

Cool things happened when distribution became free. I expect even cooler things will happen when creation does too.

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