Patreon<\/a> CEO Jack Conte says he\u2019s not anti-AI. He can\u2019t be.<\/p>\n\u201cI run a frickin\u2019 tech company,\u201d he told the audience at the SXSW conference in Austin this week. Still, the founder of the creator platform has limits. Conte doesn\u2019t think AI companies should be able to train their models on the work of creators without compensation, calling their decision to dub this \u201cfair use\u201d a \u201cbogus\u201d argument.<\/p>\n
Conte\u2019s SXSW talk positioned AI as another moment within the ongoing cycle of disruption that creators have been through many times before in the internet age. Like the transition from buying music on iTunes to streaming, or shifting video to the vertical format favored by TikTok, AI will likely break a lot of the models that creative people have worked hard to build over the years. Still, he believes they will thrive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI learned a very important thing as an artist, which is that change does not mean death. You can get back up, and you can fucking go again,\u201d said Conte, who created Patreon to solve a problem he had faced as a musician: getting people to pay creators for their work.<\/p>\n
Similarly, he doesn\u2019t believe that AI companies should be able to scoop up creators\u2019 content to train their models without some sort of compensation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe AI companies are claiming fair use, but this argument is bogus,\u201d Conte said, reading from a printout of his speech, or rather, his manifesto. \u201cIt\u2019s bogus because while they claim it\u2019s fair to use the work of creators as training data, they do multimillion-dollar deals with rights holders and publishers like Disney and Cond\u00e9 Nast and Vox and Warner Music.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the AI companies\u2019 argument around fair use was legal and sound, then they wouldn\u2019t be paying these large rightsholders, he noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s legal to just use it, why pay?\u201d he asked rhetorically. \u201cWhy pay them and not creators \u2014 not the millions of illustrators and musicians and writers \u2014 whose work has been consumed by these models to build hundreds of billions of dollars of value for these companies?\u201d<\/p>\n
Reading between the lines, it\u2019s clear that Conte would like to tap into some of those payouts, too, for Patreon\u2019s own community of creators. And he\u2019s using Patreon\u2019s scale as a creator community filled with hundreds of thousands of people to make that argument.<\/p>\n
The founder also clarified that his decision to call out AI companies\u2019 behavior is not because he\u2019s anti-AI or anti-tech or even anti-change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI accept the inevitability of change, and I feel agency in discovering my next path through the chaos. A part of that challenge even excites me,\u201d Conte said. \u201cStill, the AI companies should pay creators for our work, not because the tech is bad \u2014 but because a lot of it is good, or it will be soon \u2014 and it\u2019s going to be the future. And when we plan for humanity\u2019s future, we should plan for society\u2019s artists, too, not just for their sake, but for the sake of all of us. Societies that value and incentivize creativity are better for it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The talk ended on a hopeful note, with Conte expressing his belief that humans will make and enjoy the work of other humans for a long time, despite whatever progress AI makes on this front. <\/p>\n
\u201cGreat artists don\u2019t play back what already exists,\u201d Conte said, referencing large language models\u2019 (LLMs) ability to predict the appropriate output. \u201cThey stand on the shoulders of giants. They push culture forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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