Key Takeaways
- Content creators might face reduced advertising and subscription revenue as AI tools increasingly provide direct answers to search queries.
- This shift means less traffic to original content sources, directly impacting creators’ ability to monetize their work.
- Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince advises creators to negotiate with AI companies to ensure they are paid when their content is used.
- Prince also believes that high-quality, original content will become even more valuable in an AI-driven landscape.
Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, has issued a significant warning for people who create content online. He suggests that the growing use of Artificial Intelligence for search purposes could lead to a drop in their earnings from advertising and subscriptions.
The core issue, Prince explained to CNBC in an interview reported by Business Insider, isn’t that people are searching less. Instead, AI is increasingly providing answers directly on search engine result pages, often drawing from creators’ work without sending users to the original source.
This trend could spell trouble for content producers. When search engines and AI bots offer immediate answers, fewer people click through to the websites where the content originates. This results in missed ad views and fewer opportunities for readers to subscribe.
“If you’re making money through subscriptions, through advertising, any of the things that content creators are doing today, visitors aren’t going to be seeing those ads,” Prince stated. He added, “That means it’s gonna be much, much harder for you to be a content creator.”
Looking ahead, Prince proposed a proactive approach. He believes creators should work with tech companies to restrict AI bots from accessing their work unless there’s a payment arrangement. “The fuel that runs these AI engines is original content,” he noted.
By limiting unpaid access, creators can establish the scarcity of their work and assert its value. “What content creators have to do is… say, ‘you’re not going to get my content unless you’re actually paying me for creating that content,'” Prince advised.
However, there’s also a note of optimism, particularly for those producing genuinely valuable material. “Original content that is actually highly valuable is I think going to be more valuable in this future,” Prince commented.
This isn’t the first time Prince has discussed AI’s impact. He previously told Business Insider that AI can also empower businesses by supplementing workers’ skills, effectively giving them “superpowers,” rather than just replacing them.
