| If you're finding value in our Creator Economy newsletter, I encourage you to consider subscribing to The Information. It contains exclusive reporting on the most important stories in tech. Save up to $250 on your first year of access. Welcome back! Nearly everywhere I look, I'm seeing signs of how artificial intelligence is shaking up the way we engage online, from shopping to social media. OpenAI is reportedly working on a new checkout feature, betting that more consumers will turn to chatbots like its ChatGPT to find and purchase products. At the same time, I'm seeing an influx of realistic AI videos on my social media feeds, while a new generation of virtual influencers is fooling people into thinking they're human. That means social media giants and creator startups have to grapple with both issues: how to respond to the potential business threat of AI—and how to benefit from it. LTK, a creator commerce app, is an example of how founders are trying to thread the AI needle. The Dallas-based startup takes a hard line on AI when it comes to creating content. But it's incorporating AI into some tools for creators. For instance, the 14-year-old startup does not allow its human influencers to use any AI bots to interact with customers or upload content created by AI, Amber Venz Box, LTK's co-founder and president, told my colleague Akash Pasricha in a recent interview with TITV, The Information's new daily streaming show. "Our promise to our customer is that you are getting a real human who is making real human recommendations," she said. LTK started out by providing affiliate links, which creators add to their posts to collect a cut of sales for products they promote, and also generates revenue by taking a slice of sales and charging brands to match them up with creators for ad deals. The company is also working to build out a broader advertising business. Box said she believes AI "falls short" when it comes to browsing and discovering new products, which is where creators have an advantage. "Why is it that you wanted to search for that hotel in San Miguel?" she said. "Or why did you want Hokas? It's probably because a creator told you about them and recommended them." Box also took a swipe at Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, citing founder Mark Zuckerberg's comments during the government's antitrust trial against it earlier this year. In testimony, Zuckerberg noted that social media is more "about exploring interests and understanding what's going on in the world and entertainment" than connecting with friends. "When I open the platforms, I have very low trust," Box said. "There's things I've seen this week that look really real, whether it's in politics, weather, local news, recommendations that look real, but I have a suspicion that they're fake. When you put a product or a brand or a person in a low trust environment, it actually reduces the efficacy of even that content living there," she said. "If you want to see real people … [LTK] is doing that," Box added. LTK also has an influencer marketing business that connects advertisers with creators for deals, and Box noted brands also want to appear in a "trusted environment." (For its part, Meta has rolled out labels to indicate whether a post was made using AI.) At the same time, LTK has introduced LTK Co-Pilot, a set of free AI tools to help creators better manage their businesses, including auto-generated video captions and automatically tagging products in a creator's photos. When it comes to AI, "we are definitely taking an opposite approach to what we see across broad entertainment platforms," she said. Here's what else is going on… See The Information's Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors. Spotify said its ads business has been "moving too slowly." The music streaming service reported operating income of about $468.7 million (€406 million), which was below the company's previous guidance, and revenue of about $4.8 billion (€4.2 billion) also missed previously stated guidance. The stock fell more than 11% on Tuesday. Read more here. Imax announced that it would screen the winning films from startup Runway's AI-generated film festival at some of its theaters. Cafeteria, a startup connecting brands with teenagers for feedback and insights on their companies, announced $3 million in new funding at a valuation of $22 million. Companies such as Roller Rabbit, a preppy clothing retailer, are working with Cafeteria to identify trends early, drive their influencer strategies and make new product decisions. ICYMI: Elon Musk posted on X that he's "bringing back Vine, but in AI form." Musk hasn't provided more information. Twitter, now called X, acquired the popular six-second video app Vine in 2012, but later shut it down. VShojo, a talent agency that represented virtual YouTubers known as VTubers, is shutting down. The move comes after its most high-profile talent, Ironmouse, posted a video last week saying she left VShojo over a "significant amount" of unpaid funds and a missing $500,000 donation to charity that she claimed was owed by VShojo. Her announcement triggered a mass exodus of other VTubers from the agency. "I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us to this point," VShojo CEO Justin Ignacio wrote in a statement posted to X announcing the closure of his agency. (Read my 2022 profile of Ironmouse's rise here.) "People talk about the most personal shit in their lives to ChatGPT," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on comedian Theo Von's podcast last week. "Right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there's legal privilege for it," Altman said, such as doctor-patient confidentiality. Altman said his company hasn't "featured that out yet" for when users talk to ChatGPT and share sensitive information. If there's later a lawsuit, "we could be required to produce that, and I think that's very screwed up. I think we should have the same concept of privacy for your conversations with AI that we do with a therapist," Altman added. In May, the judge overseeing OpenAI's copyright lawsuit with the New York Times ordered OpenAI to retain logs of users' conversations with ChatGPT. The AI company is appealing the order. Ty Haney announced she's returning to the athleisure brand Outdoor Voices she co-founded in 2013 when she was 23. She left in 2020 following a widely publicized dispute with the board. Read our interview with Haney from The Information's 204 Creator Economy Summit where she reflected on the experience. That's the percentage of creators surveyed by Substack who are already using AI, primarily for tasks such as research and editing rather than fully generating content. The report also found that men reported higher usage than women. Female adopters were more likely to express concerns, such as about plagiarism, ethics or the environmental impact. Creators also cited AI as helpful for accessibility, such as organizing thoughts for writers with ADHD or dyslexia. The data is based on survey responses from more than 2,000 writers, podcasters and other creators using Substack. Meta Platforms will stop political and social issues-related advertising in the European Union in October. The Facebook parent said the move was in response to upcoming regulation in the bloc about the transparency of political advertising. EU politicians, candidates and other users will be able to continue creating and sharing political content on Meta's social media apps, but won't be able to promote it through paid advertising. Thank you for reading the Creator Economy Newsletter! I'd love your feedback, ideas and tips: kaya@theinformation.com. If you think someone else might enjoy this newsletter, please pass it forward or they can sign up here: https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/creator-economy | 
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