I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
What happens when AI creates everything?
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Hey Reader, Here's where we're headed: Soon, AI will write podcast scripts optimized to hook attention and deliver perfectly timed punchlines. AI voices will narrate them. AI avatars will perform them, A/B testing whether audiences prefer a 25-year-old woman, a 50-year-old man, or the podcasting baby. AI will cut the clips, write the titles, and push everything to every platform. And then AI bots will consume it all, share it, comment on it. We'll have content that’s:
No humans required. Sounds great, right? I don't think so either. AI isn't actually newWhat's odd is this isn't some distant future—AI isn't new. For the last seven to ten years, we were constantly over-promised on what AI could do. Companies wrote "AI" into their pitch decks just to get funding. Remember Amazon Go stores that used "AI" for automatic checkout? It turned out there were huge teams in India watching cameras to see what you put in your basket. Artificial intelligence? More like just regular old-fashioned intelligence. But after years of AI being overhyped, it's here and delivering real results. And here's what I believe: AI is significantly more powerful than what we imagine now. It's actually under-hyped right now. I think we're significantly underestimating how much the world will change in the next two to three years. Why I still believe in creatorsBuckminster Fuller said, "The race between dystopia and utopia will be neck and neck until the very end." I've bet my entire career on the future of the creator economy. First as a creator myself, writing and podcasting. Next as a coach, diving deep inside creator businesses to help them scale. And finally, running Kit to serve over 500,000 creators who use our platform. Despite all of this, I still believe in it now more than ever. Why? Because people don't connect with pixels. They connect with people. In the world we're walking into—full of noise, bots, and infinite content—what's real will matter more than ever. Three predictions about where we're headedFuturists always say "everything will change" but they never say what. So at the risk of being completely wrong, here are three predictions about the future of the creator economy. Prediction 1: AI will give creators superpowers (not replace them)So much of work as a creator is busy work. We've always embraced technology that makes our work faster: better editing tools, easier recording setups, improved collaboration platforms. It used to be that if you recorded a podcast and wanted to turn it into written content, that was a very manual process. You'd have to re-listen, pull out key themes, and write everything from scratch. But now you can feed the transcript into AI and instantly get a list of topics, takeaways, and quotes you could build on. From there, it's easy to turn it into other formats like a newsletter issue. This gives creators the ability to move faster and do more with less. You're not replacing your creativity—you're amplifying it. Because while AI might be able to generate, only you can build trust. Only you can have a lived experience worth sharing. Only you can create a connection that actually means something. Prediction 2: Email will change substantially (but not be replaced)Email has lasted for more than 30 years and nothing has been able to kill it. AI is going to kill a lot of things, but I don't think it will kill email. The candidates for replacing it might be tools like WhatsApp, Instagram Messenger, Telegram, or something new entirely. But all of those are owned by individual platforms and companies. One of the hardest problems in AI right now is that it's very hard to move content between closed systems. I believe email will remain the open system. But consumption will change dramatically. What if there's a podcast episode automatically generated from your newsletter subscriptions, made just for you? It reads your favorite newsletters in full, then summarizes the ones you just want to keep up with. Totally bespoke for your commute. That's why email changes substantially but won't be replaced. Be ready to create in new ways and focus on content your subscribers will actually want to consume. The inbox will change, but email as the underlying system will endure. Prediction 3: Every business will become a creator businessYou're already seeing it with local businesses—they're doing so much of their work on Instagram and TikTok as creators. Creator marketing is the best way to capture and hold attention. It's direct, sincere, and builds trust. The lawn care company sharing before-and-after transformations. The painter posting time-lapse videos of room makeovers. The local bakery building a following with behind-the-scenes content. Creator marketing just becomes... marketing. We're seeing this with celebrities too. Just in the last six months, we launched newsletters on Kit for Hasan Minhaj, Tom Brady, Dua Lipa, Ellen, Lil' Jon, Morgan Freeman, Matthew McConaughey, and more. Some people saw this and thought, "Oh, I guess Kit is for celebrities now. Not creators like me." But that's not true at all. Kit isn't pivoting to serve them; celebrities are pivoting to become like you. They want creative control and a direct connection with their fans. Everyone is converging on creator marketing. What I shared at Craft + CommerceThe race between dystopia and utopia really will be neck and neck until the very end. But here's what I know: the creators who lean into what makes them irreplaceably human—while using AI to handle the busy work—will be the ones who win. That's just the beginning of what I covered in my keynote at Craft + Commerce. I dove deep into how creators can build for the world we're walking into, the specific ways consumption will change, and exactly what connecting people and connecting technology means in practice. We also shared the progress we've been making on Creator Network and the Kit App Store. We're constantly building, and these updates show exactly how we're preparing creators for this future. If you want to see the full talk and hear about all the exciting new features we're launching and building... Watch the full keynote and see our biggest product updates » PODCASTHow I Built a Million-Dollar Company Using My Personal BrandToday I’m joined by Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor, one of the most beloved podcast hosting platforms out there (I personally use it for my show). In this episode, we dig into how Justin has grown from product builder to thought leader, and where he’s headed next as he builds influence and creates content that compounds. We cover:
Watch or listen to episode » X POST"Our marketing team is just me and ~40 AI agents"I came across this unconventional marketing "org chart" on X. Jacob Bank shared the 40+ AI agents he uses to run an entire marketing operation solo. He's organized them by function: social media, blog, email, community, partners, etc. Some just look like automations, but he's set it up like a real company with agents handling different specialized roles. What do you think of this AI agent "org chart"? Have a great week! —Nathan |
Nathan Barry
I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
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