The amount of content generated on the internet every day is staggering. Using YouTube as example, you’d need over 11,000 computers all streaming YouTube channels just to keep up with the new content being added in real-time, and that wouldn’t touch the billions of videos already uploaded. It’s crazy!
Despite that, it seems that AI is about to make this problem much worse. When people can upload 100x more videos with the same amount of work, they will. The race to capture eyeballs will continue to accelerate, and it’s likely going to create a big mess.
That said, the people we’re trying to reach don’t need more content. Heck, they can’t deal with the volume of content already, so creating more won’t help. This was summarized very well in a post from David Berkowitz where he discussed why he’s leaving Twitter/X and going to Threads right now. In that post, he shared the following:
I’m reminded of a line I heard on an AI panel recently hosted by Knotch, one of my favorite lines in part because the speaker spelled out such an obvious point. When we were talking about using AI for content generation, Jamie Roô, Head of Wealth Management Digital Content at Morgan Stanley, said something like, “Our customers don’t need more content.”
Most of us don’t need more content, more people to follow, more news sources, or more connections. Most of us don’t even need more of an audience; we just need to better engage with those we’re reaching or provide more value to them.
Mass-generated AI content might attract some viewers, but that will lead to an increase in the value of people that focus on true engagement and connection. You don’t need more content to do that, you just need to do a better job of building authentic relationships through direct conversations.
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