The One-Man Studio (Powered by AI)

YouTube’s CEO said it himself:

“Creators should be recognized as next-generation studios”

I believe we will see the one-man studio take off in the next year due to AI.

This comes off the back of a few key trends that together make the perfect recipe for this future. With AI rapidly advancing, we’ve seen a democratization of creativity as well as an increase in layoffs at big companies. We also can see the support for the one-man studio future from industry leaders and companies—this future is being built for.

Let me explain.

Why Now?

AI has accelerated rapidly over the past couple of years (from LLMs to Image Generators and everything in between).

With AI and tooling becoming increasingly available to more people, we will be able to do more with less. Think about some of the most popular tools today and their applications to the creative process:

• ChatGPT—copywriting, ideating, script writing, etc.

• Elevenlabs—audio dubbing/translation, text-to-speech, etc.

• Midjourney—YouTube thumbnails, ad creatives, etc.

• Suno AI—text-music, soundtracks, etc.

The tools and models are continuously improving. We are sitting at the bottom of the asymptote and it’s about to take off.

The first piece of the puzzle has been put into place already—the democratization of creativity by AI.

AI is Democratizing Creativity

The ability to generate text, image and audio are well on their way to becoming a single click of a button.

And what is text, image and audio?

• Media.

• Content.

• Creation in the digital world.

But we don’t have to be an artist of 20 years or a thumbnail specialist anymore—we can leverage AI to express our creativity.

A new breed of creator has arrived: The Generalist Creator.

The Generalist Creator

This type of creator is a multidisciplinary human that is able to navigate the world of creation and technology.

Dan Shipper discusses the concept of the allocation economy—the fact that AI is moving the level master above knowledge to the ability to act as a “manager” for the AI’s we work with. The generalist creator will be a better manager of AI models and tools, allowing them to better leverage their time and resources with less focus required to be place upon the nitty gritty details of implementation.

This movement towards the Generalist Creator marks a pivotal shift in the creative landscape. It underscores the importance of adaptability and a broad skill set in leveraging AI's potential.

As we look towards the diminishing corporate job pool, the necessity for individuals to embrace this multifaceted approach to creation becomes even more pronounced.

Corporate Jobs Pool Will Shrink

In the enterprise world, AI means:

1. Automate processes

2. Save time, money and resources

As these models and tools get better, companies will continue to integrate them into they business. We’ve already seen massive layoffs over the past year but they won’t say the quiet part output—AI is coming for corporate jobs.

Take Google for example:

• laid off 30,000 employees in 2023.

• recently fired its unionized YouTube Music team.

And think about it: Google is one of the leading companies in AI.

It would make sense that they dogfood their own technology. One of their top priorities is making and saving money; if that means replacing humans with AI, they won’t have a problem with it.

People will need to find new ways to work and find purpose. This could be:

1. Become full content creator

2. Build a product

3. Start a service business

Whatever it may be, it doesn’t matter because one thing remains the same in all of these: Content.

Content is the distribution mechanism for your brand. And so what do we do if we don’t have huge team?

You guessed it. Become a one-man studio.

Personalized Entertainment

You may think that the internet is oversaturated with content but believe me we’ve barely scratched the surface.

Humans have shown over and over again how much they can crave entertainment of all kinds.

In a world of generative AI, this will lead to nicher content genres, mediums and more.The demand for content will be there, motivating more people to fill that demand.

And what better way to start on your own than by having systems of AI tools and workflows to help you in the balancing act of content creation.

Industry Leaders Are Building For This Future

I mentioned the YouTube CEO’s belief in the one man studio, but I did not mention his claim that AI will empower creativity.

And let’s look at some of the people working on AI and creativity:

• Runway ML

• Midjourney

• OpenAI (Sora, ChatGPT, etc)

• Elevenlabs

• Canva

• Descript

• VEED

I could keep going but you get the point.

This isn’t a “Yeah maybe if things go a certain way and—” No!

It’s already in motion. The seeds are being planted.

Now it’s up to you to decide if you want to stake out your plot of land while the fields are still green.

How Close is This Future?

I know you’re thinking “Yeah this sounds all well and good, Michael. But, how close are actually to this future?”.

Well, I’ve always been a fan of showing over telling. Allow me to illustrate some of the success stories and use cases already possible today.

1. Midjourney Usage

As of November 1, 2023, Midjourney has around 16.45 million users.

Here is a percentage breakdown of the social platforms users use it for, according to this article:

• Instagram: 45%

• Facebook: 21%

• X (Twitter): 15%

• Reddit: 6%

• TikTok: 5%

• Pinterest: 3%

For a company that launched only 19 months ago (at the time of writing this), these numbers are quite impressive. It is a testament to the value the tool provides to the users.

This is only one tool of thousands—as more companies build in this space, we will see more outliers like this that over time add up to a larger set of high quality AI tools that almost anyone can use right now for creative work.

2. OpenAI’s Sora

A more recent development that sent shockwaves through the AI community—Open AI’s latest announcement about their text-to-video model: Sora.

On top of generating stunning videos from text, the model also allows you to extend videos backwards and forwards in time (imagine iterating through video generations to create a short film!).

There are other exciting aspects that I encourage you to check out for yourself The main point is that if we are here today, imagine where we’ll be 6 months from now.

The advancements show no sign of slowing down and it’s bringing the barrier to entry for creation down to near zero.

3. Newsletter Automation

In a previous article, I wrote about the start of my journey on the road to a one-man media company.

How it works: It generates a newsletter draft and tweets from a single topic with AI.

This simple prototype shows just how accessible and powerful AI is to us right now, and it’s trending more in this direction day-by-day.

What Now?

And so why is the one-man studio happening?

1. AI is democratizing creativity

2. Corporate job loss will lead to value seeking elsewhere (content creation)

3. Personalized entertainment will get nicher

4. Industry leaders are building for this future already

The future is clear. One man studios will be with us sooner than we think.

Now it’s up to you if you want to leverage the greenfield opportunity AI presents (psst. Check out my Skool community where we learn about things like this).

That’s all for now, folks. ‘Til next time, much love and peace y’all 🤠