The Rise of Synthetic Media & Digital Creators

We’ve seen professional media platforms do this on a smaller scale (e.g. Netflix making originals, etc). But to do this at the scale of an open creation platform, such as TikTok or Instagram, platforms won’t be able to rely on humans. They’ll instead need to rely on machines to create AI-generated media, or as my friend Matt Hartman calls it, synth... See more

From deepfakes to synthetic videos, the next media format may be one where it’s not just inspiration that’s optional, but the creator may be optional because the format is capable of creating itself.

For synthetic media to reach millions of views—as the Swift images did in just hours—they need massive, aggregated networks, which allow them to identify an initial audience and then spread. As the amount of available content grows with the broader use of generative AI, social media’s role as curator will become even more important.

Take a stroll through TikTok’s greatest hits and you’ll see that people are clearly more engaged by a creator’s process than the outcome. With due respect to TikTok creators, their success isn’t purely because of the technical skill of their dancing, singing, or acting. It’s the spirit and humor they bring to whatever they do. If the human behind

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