Everyone is buzzing about Sora, which can easily capture your face in a few second of video, then create you as an AI character, and, with very high fidelity, put you in nearly any situation you can imagine.

I’m out of invitations, but if you DM me I’ll send you one to try for yourself when I have more available.

And for my first creation (as is tradition, I uploaded the entire video without editing, warts and all), I decided to tap dance while the world burns.

And that’s how generative AI feels sometimes.

Are we ruining social media by filling it with low-effort, dopamine-rich content that’s ultimately meaningless, or are we introducing tools that will bring about an ultra-premium content revolution?

Probably worth discussing, as the fact that you subscribe to a newsletter called ‘The Creator Rep’ probably means your current or future job depends on the outcome of this issue.

Also in this edition:

🎤 Taylor Swift breaks the internet…again

👩🏽‍💼 OWM launches to help creators become owners

🏃🏻‍♂️ DoorDash launches a shortform creator program

🍔 Feedfeed gobbled up by People Inc.

💪🏼 Jobs from Feels Good, Linktree, and Colab Space.

🎭 …and a dank meme from yours truly!

Let’s get into it.

NEWS:

AI Video Gets Free and Easy

TLDR:

• Sora’s app launch includes unlimited deepfakes within generative videos in a Instagram-like feed.

• Cuts, voices, and scripts makes it a meme machine, and social networks are already seeing an influx of Sora videos

• Could this be the moment we look back on and say, “This was the end of creators?”

Let’s be clear: the Sora app can easily create videos that are shareable and satisfying.

It’s like modern day JibJab. And as anyone from the early 2000’s can tell you, parents love that kind of comedy.

So if we can all agree that this kind of content is finally consumable in a way that past AI video generation was…let’s say…a ‘work in progress’, does that mean we’ve officially hit the inflection point where we find out if there’s a future for creators?

I’ll cover the Pro-AI stance, the Pro-Human stance, and what I believe is the most likely outcome.

PRO-AI

I agree, AI is simply an echo of everything that came before it. So it can remix in exceptionally complex ways, but can’t break new ground.

AI couldn’t have wrote Shakespeare before Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.

But let’s be honest: how often are you cracking the binding on ‘Twelfth Night’?

Especially in social media.

Sora’s new model, end-to-end, is an exceptionally capable dopamine machine.

And the habiltuation and mass adoption of an FYP-mindset, where you open a social app and have content simply served to you in a feed rather than searching, surfing, and subscribing to find content, has created the perfect petri dish for generative AI to grow.

Audiences still love direct-to-camera hot-takes, but Sora can now do that.

Lip syncs? Easy. And you can do it with The Rock.

Aesthetic outfit try-ons and make up tutorials? Got it covered.

Seriously, look at the top trending videos of the day on TikTok and ask yourself seriously: how many of these can’t Sora do right now with the right prompt?

PRO-HUMAN

AI content, even when done well, still has an awkward roboticism that comes from algorithmic generation.

People move weird.

Their faces are a little too clean.

They don’t quite make you feel happy when they smile or sad when they cry.

There seems to be something inherent to human performance that AI can’t replicate, and maybe can’t.

Not to get religious in a creator economy newsletter, but maybe there is a soul, or an energy, or just an overly complex realism that a machine will never fully nail.

And if content can never make you feel as deeply when it’s AI generated, can it be competitive?

We don’t have a problem where there isn’t enough content. There’s already too much content.

So AI content can’t just be plentiful. It needs to be better. And so far, the idea of AI content passing the ‘novelty’ level hasn’t been proven out.

WHAT I THINK WILL REALLY HAPPEN

AI is going to get so good that it’s indistingushable from actual filmed content.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this will be true. And fast.

But end-to-end generative content is a loser as a business model.

And the reason is simple.

If you can do it, so can every 14 year old in Indonesia.

And there’s more of them. And they have more time.

There is nothing that you as a business person can do with generative AI that the collective boredom and drive of teenagers can’t do at scale better, faster, and stronger.

So, if you want to make AI a business, you have to innovate.

And you know what it takes to innovate? PEOPLE!

So no matter how good these models get, supply and demand will dictate that scarcity will only be found with quality, quality will only be found with human innovation, and human innovation will take artistry.

FAME & FORTUNE

What creators, brands, governments, and platforms are making waves this week in the name of fortune, fame, and fun?

🎤 Swifties aren’t slowing down. The release of Taylor Swift’s.new album Life of a Showgirl broke tons of records across Spotify (the top song at the time of this writing already topped 50m streams in a few days), Apple Music (biggest album of 2025 already), and topped 20m views on YouTube.

👩🏽‍💼 OWM (transparency note: they are a technology partner of this writer’s company Stealth Talent) has officially launched to make it easier for creators and entrepreneurs to play along. Creators promote, they get ownership, and the entrepreneur gets a shortcut to fame and fortune. Curious if this is valuable? Just ask David Choe whose equity is worth biliions, which he was given for doing a mural for Facebook in their early days.

🏃🏻‍♂️ Food video fans rejoice! DoorDash launched a shortform creator program to provide a TikTok-like feed to help whet some appetites. If it gets me free fries, consider myself a creator!

🍔 People Inc chowed down on the social cooking site Feedfeed, rolling them into their impressive publishing infrastructure. Another weekly reminder that M&A is heating up around publishers who need to be savvier on social and user-generated content websites with strong communities.

JOB BOARD

Content Creator, Feels Good

A dream job for a 420-friendly content creator. The best part of working in less brand-friendly markets is the freedom to take serious chances with a brand. This role will let content creators be wildly creative in a way that may be harder with a larger, more corporate brand.

TikTok Content Creator (Contractor), Linktree

The link-in-bio space is about as red of an ocean as it gets. There are tons of solutions for creators and very little variation in their value propositions. But Linktree raised large social network-levels of money, and that shouldn’t be overlooked. This role will teach tactical creative to showcase a brand that needs to stand out…and fast.

TikTok MCN Operation Manager, Colab Space

I get it. This company clearly doesn’t understand how toxic the word MCN is in the creator economy. And they misspelled ‘collab’ in their name. But I digress: it’s pretty awesome that a coworking space is thinking about how they can build infrastructure to support TikTok creation. I have to assume this, with success, will be a strong beacon to get TikTokkers to become members.