Patreon CEO Says AI Is Using Creators’ Work Without Consent, Credit or Pay

Artificial intelligence may be transforming the creative economy, but many creators are not benefiting from the technology built on their work. 

In a new video posted on the video app Patreon, Jack Conte, co-founder and chief executive of Patreon, warned that creatives risk being left out of the economic value generated by AI systems trained on creative content. 

“My overall take on AI right now is that I’m both amazed and furious,” Conte said in the video. “I’m amazed at the technology… But as a creator, I’m angry that we aren’t being paid for the value that we created for these models.” 

Generative AI systems are typically trained on massive datasets that include text, images, music, and other forms of creative work gathered from across the internet. Those datasets help the models learn styles, patterns, and creative techniques. 

Conte argues that while AI companies are building powerful tools using this data, the creators whose work helped train the systems often have little say in how it is used.