By Ethan Sun, Co-founder and CEO of MyShell
Crypto enthusiasm has soared in recent weeks, and AI models made major waves in 2023 – but next year’s headlines will increasingly focus on the intersection of these two technological movements.
Why? Because the unprecedented productivity and creative potential catalyzed by generative AI (GenAI) models like ChatGPT and Midjourney have catapulted creators into a thrilling new era dedicated to “creating and sharing” content. But as this creative output continues to cascade endlessly, there is an inevitable, escalating need to focus more on “protecting and rewarding.”
Content isn’t just about creation. According to Deloitte, every user generated content (UGC) platform is made up of 4 key components: content production, content aggregation, content distribution and content consumption. And within that framework, there is an implicit understanding that content must somehow be attributed and valued.
Today’s GenAI models are already revolutionizing the way content is produced, and future AI-powered tools may have the potential to improve the way content is aggregated, distributed, and consumed. But as AI continues to reshape the creative process, it’s clear the technical capabilities of blockchain technology will provide the necessary framework to uphold the principles of fairness and value in this rapidly evolving digital ecosystem. Let’s see how this could unfold.
Protecting and Rewarding What’s Created and Shared
AI adoption is enjoying a hot streak, with no signs of slowing down. According to Crunchbase, more than 25% of all investment in US startups is AI-related, and a Gartner poll recently found that 55% of organizations surveyed are piloting or actively using GenAI. This proliferation of AI-generated content will introduce new, complex copyright and ownership challenges.
Under these conditions, blockchain’s unique benefits become increasingly apparent. For instance, an on-chain ledger could be used to record every event associated with a piece of AI-generated content in immutable detail – creating a time-stamped record of the creation time, content owner, responsible AI model, and generation parameters. This digital fingerprinting ensures the unique identification and traceability of each AI output, which is crucial in an era where GenAI tools can easily replicate creative styles and produce endless amounts of content.
This has significant implications for the monetization of AI-generated content – especially when paired with smart contracts that automatically calculate royalties, distribute earnings, and manage entire tokenized economies. Eventually, these blockchain-based solutions may even help redirect value back to the owners of the content these GenAIs are trained on. In short, blockchain is crucial to the success of AI-driven creator economies, ensuring responsible innovation alongside economic longevity.
The Structural Convergence of GenAI and Blockchain
2023 only scratched the surface of what blockchain and AI can achieve together. Beyond automating royalties and clarifying asset and IP ownership, blockchain technology has the potential to reshape the very nature of AI development.
Ultimately, this transformation could center on three key opportunities:
- Decentralized Data Sources: Within the AI realm, data is king. Web3's decentralized architecture offers a novel approach to data collection and storage, ensuring security and privacy. This vast, decentralized repository of data can fuel AI algorithms, leading to more robust and diverse AI models.
- Collaborative AI Model Development: By introducing clear and attractive tokenized incentives for AI development, blockchain can help ensure that the value generated by new AI models is equitably distributed among developers and contributors. Beyond rewarding content creators, this has the potential to diversify AI development away from the current tech oligarchy in favor of a more inclusive, community-owned AI ecosystem.
- Crowdsourced Computing Power: AI models, with their extensive computational requirements, can benefit from blockchain’s decentralized infrastructure, leveraging crypto mining resources and other independent GPUs. This would effectively democratize access to computational resources, thereby turbocharging AI model training and execution, high-fidelity VR experiences, and other computation-heavy forms of entertainment.
These blockchain-enabled enhancements will unlock entire new business models and content creation methods, just in time to meet rising demand. According to Andreessen Horowitz, the integration of generative AI in content creation is resulting in more organic audience growth and an increased willingness among fans to pay for content. And as more content platforms leverage the combined benefits of GenAI and blockchain technology, we will see new structural innovations that redefine how businesses and communities co-create.
Web3 Was Never Just About Blockchain
As we enter 2024, the combined forces of GenAI and blockchain are set to revolutionize the content creation landscape. With significant venture capital investments, evolving tokenomics models, and robust demand for new forms of content, a new paradigm is gradually emerging – one which has the potential to create a more equitable, sustainable, and vibrant ecosystem for content creators worldwide.
This synergy between AI and blockchain doesn’t just pertain to creative content – it reflects a broader vision of what web3 could ultimately look like. Blockchain’s decentralized architecture – with its incentive structures, trustless transparency, and ability to attribute and transfer value – will form the backbone of the future internet. And AI, with its endless capacity to combine, connect, and create, is essential within the realms of creative conceptualization, personalization, and discovery. The sum of these parts is greater than the whole, and the biggest opportunities exist at the intersection of these vast, overlapping technologies.
Ethan Sun is the co-founder and CEO of MyShell, an open ecosystem for AI-native apps. Ethan is a serial entrepreneur. He graduated from Oxford University, majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science. Before founding MyShell, he built and led the core tech team at Aibee, the AI unicorn start-up. MyShell has grown to over 40,000 AI agent creators and 400,000 users within one year, making it the largest and most vibrant creator-first web3 ecosystem for building AI agents. Recently, MyShell has raised $5.6 million from INCE Capital, Folius Ventures, Hashkey Capital, and SevenX Ventures, etc. For more information, please visit http://app.myshell.ai
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.