← Paper page From Seller to Data Supplier: How Creator Compensation Enables AI Displacement Ask this paper

From Seller to Data Supplier

How Creator Compensation Enables AI Displacement

If creators are paid for the data that trains an AI competitor, what happens to them, and to everyone else?

Lijuan Luo, Emaad Manzoor, Nathan Yang, Fan Yao · Working paper

A conceptual tour based on the public abstract; the full draft is not public.

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Creators’ work trains the AI that competes with them

creators consumers creators sell their work directly generative AI on the platform content becomes training data AI sells to the same consumers

The paper asks how paying creators for training data changes prices, who participates, and demand.

Unpaid, creators can walk away, and take the data with them

AI takes direct sales creators exit less new data a self-limiting loop

Without compensation, creator exit and the resulting loss of data constrain displacement.

Paid for data, creators stay, in a new role

creators consumers selling directly AI displaces direct sales data compensation

Compensation can let AI displace creators’ direct sales while keeping them on as paid data suppliers.

Who gains when creators are paid for data?

creators’ rents total surplus consumer surplus qualitative comparison under the paper’s baseline assumptions; no numbers shown

Under the baseline assumptions, compensation raises creators’ rents and total surplus but lowers consumer surplus.

What to take away

  1. 1AI displacement can depend on whether creators stayWithout pay, exit and lost data hold displacement back.
  2. 2Compensation changes the creator’s roleFrom seller to paid data supplier.
  3. 3Displacement and harm to creators need not coincideIn the baseline model, creators and total surplus gain; consumers lose.

Paper page · Ask this paper · The full draft is not public.