“AI 垃圾内容（AI slop）”也许正在孕育下一个YouTube， 其驱动力来自一个全新的、AI 原生的创作者阶层：生成者（The Generators）。 在我把这个想法分享到 WithDelphi《Library of Minds》播客之后，收到了大量后续问题，所以这里做一次更深入的展开…… 2025 年的消费级 AI，很像 2008 年的消费级移动互联网。就像早期移动时代一样，我们正在同时看到潜在的巨头，以及昙花一现的风口产品。 2008 年，App Store 排名前列的应用是：Facebook、手电筒应用，以及 iPint（一个通过倾斜手机来“喝”虚拟啤酒的游戏）。最终，只有一个成长为长期成功的生意。 正如聚合理论所提醒我们的那样，最成功的消费级公司，往往能够聚合海量的需求或供给（致谢 Ben Thompson）。其他的一切，最终都会被商品化。 警惕“氛围型收入（vibe revenue）”（致谢 Greg Isenberg）。许多当前的应用，靠的是好奇心、新鲜感或 FOMO（错失恐惧）来赚钱——初期转化率高、增长快，但长期留存极差。 随着竞争加剧，产品会迅速商品化，定价也会持续下探。我们必须区分：短期收入，和可持续的商业模式。 但也别轻视那些“看起来很小”的起点。 YouTube 最初充斥着一些傻乎乎的自拍视频：Keyboard Cat、Numa Numa、Chocolate Rain。 随后出现了 Ryan Higa 的短剧、Justin Bieber 的走红、以及 OK Go 的跑步机音乐视频。 随着时间推移，内容质量不断提升，平台逐渐获得主流认可，YouTube 最终成为全球最大的视频平台。 同样，TikTok 也始于 Musical.ly——最初只是青少年跳舞、对口型，后来才演变为全球娱乐引擎。 在消费级产品中，看似肤浅、低俗的东西，往往正是撬动一个庞大平台的楔子。 “AI slop”会不会就是这一代的猫咪视频？ 评论者口中的“垃圾内容”，往往是那些如果没有 AI，本来要么成本极高、要么根本不可能制作的内容： * 带有历史或虚构嘉宾的播客 * 宝可梦自然纪录片 * 动物主持的烹饪节目 * 浪漫奇幻微短剧 * “现实版吉卜力” * Dramione 同人剪辑视频 这些在技术上并不完美、但创意完全不受限制的实验，只是 UGC 内容结构性转变的第一波浪潮。 每一次技术跃迁，都会诞生一个新的创作者阶层，而旧势力总是先嘲笑他们： * 博主不是“真正的作家” * 推特写作者不是“真正的博主” * YouTuber 不是“真正的电影人” * Instagram 网红不是“真正的品味制定者” * TikTok 少年不是“真正的创作者” 现在，轮到 AI 原生的一代了：生成者（The Generators）。 他们不是去拍摄世界，而是生成世界； 他们把想法、情绪板、剧本和真实素材，与提示词和生成式 AI 模型融合在一起； 他们不断创作、重混、再生成、再精炼，直到诞生出全新的作品。 今天，他们中的许多人还是在卧室里的青少年——这与以往每一次 UGC 革命的起点并无不同。随着时间推移，这个新的创作者阶层会逐渐主流化： * 电影学院学生用宿舍预算做出巨龙特效 * 害羞的独立创业者通过虚拟形象分享真实声音与专业能力 * 小商家把 iPhone 照片变成电影级广告 * 编剧成为自己的制片人 * 创意总监运营“一人制”创意机构 AI 不只是降低了创作成本，它扩展了“谁有资格成为创作者”。 当新创作者出现时，旧平台往往并不欢迎他们。 YouTube 和 TikTok 奖励的是“露脸表演”，而不是超现实幻想。 属于生成者的新平台，可能会崛起——那里有热爱这些世界的观众，也有滋养创作者的社区。 要让这一转变真正发生，底层模型仍需进化。正如 Mirage 创始人 gmharhar 常说的那样，AI 视频的竞赛才刚刚开始。 目前，要生成角色一致、声音一致、风格一致的场景，仍然需要大量人工干预。我们需要多模态视频模型，能把真实影像与真实声音，和 AI 视觉特效无缝融合； 我们需要“编排系统”，来管理多角色、多场景、多机位。 像 Sora、Can of Soup、Mirage 的 Captions、Picsart、Tavus 这样的应用，已经让我们看到方向，但这个新媒介真正成熟所需的创作工具，才刚刚被发明出来。 我们正站在一种全新创作媒介的黎明时刻。和以往每一次革命一样，它在变得伟大之前，必然会先显得怪异、粗糙、甚至“很 sloppy”。 如果你是正在这一新浪潮中创业、创作，或作为生成者构建产品的人，我们 Sequoia 非常希望与你交流。你可以通过常规渠道联系任何一位合伙人，或者直接向我的 Delphi 提交你对消费级 AI 未来的想法： 👉 http://delphi.ai/jesslee “AI slop” might just spawn the next YouTube, driven by a new AI-native creative class: The Generators. After sharing this thought on the @WithDelphi Library of Minds podcast, I’ve gotten a ton of follow-up questions, so here’s a deeper dive... Consumer AI in 2025 rhymes with Consumer Mobile in 2008. Like early mobile, we’re seeing both potential giants and flash-in-the-pan fads. In 2008, the top apps in the App Store were Facebook, Flashlight and iPint (a game that let you drink a virtual pint by tilting your phone). Only one became an enduring business. As aggregation theory reminds us, the best consumer companies aggregate massive networks of demand or supply (h/t @benthompson). Everything else gets commoditized. Beware vibe revenue (h/t @gregisenberg). Many current apps generate revenue from curiosity, novelty, or FOMO, with high initial conversion and fast growth, but poor long-term retention. As competition increases, products will commoditize and pricing will drop. We need to separate temporary revenue from sustainable businesses. Still, don’t dismiss “small” beginnings. YouTube started with silly homemade videos like keyboard cat, Numa Numa, and Chocolate Rain. Then came Ryan Higa’s sketches, Justin Bieber’s discovery, and OK Go’s treadmill music video. Over time, quality rose, legitimacy followed, and YouTube became the world’s largest video platform. Similarly, TikTok began as http://Musical.ly with teens dancing and lipsyncing before evolving into a global entertainment engine. In consumer, what seems trivial or lowbrow can be the wedge into something massive. Is “AI slop” this generation’s cat videos? What critics dismiss as junk is often content that would’ve been prohibitively expensive or impossible to make without AI: podcasts with historical or fictional guests, Pokemon nature documentaries, cooking shows hosted by animals, romantasy microdramas, Ghibli in real life, Dramione fanvids. These technically imperfect but creatively unbounded experiments are just the first wave of a sea change in UGC content. Every technology shift mints a new creator class that the old guard mocks. Bloggers weren’t “real writers”. Twitter microbloggers weren’t “real bloggers”. YouTubers weren’t “real filmmakers.” Instagram influencers weren’t “real tastemakers”. TikTok teens weren’t “real creators.” Now comes the AI-native generation, the Generators. They conjure worlds instead of filming them, blending ideas, moodboards, scripts, and real footage with prompts and generative AI models. They create, remix, regenerate,and refine until it becomes something new. Today, many are teenagers in their bedrooms, not too different from how prior UGC revolutions began. Over time, this new creator class will become more mainstream: film students making dragons on dorm room budgets, camera-shy solopreneurs sharing their real voices and expertise through avatars, small businesses turning iPhone photos into cinematic ads, scriptwriters becoming their own showrunners, creative directors running one-person agencies. AI doesn’t just lower the cost of creation. It expands who gets to create. When new creators appear, old platforms rarely welcome them. YouTube and TikTok reward face-forward performance, not surrealist fantasy. A new home may rise for the Generators, with audiences who love their worlds and communities who nurture them. For this shift to fully take hold, the underlying models must evolve. As @trymirage founder @gmharhar often says, the AI video race has barely begun. Producing scenes with consistent characters, voices, and styles still takes too much work. We need multimodal video models that can blend real footage and authentic voices with AI VFX. We need orchestration to handle multiple characters, multiple scenes, and multiple camera angles. Apps like Sora, @canofsoup_inc, Captions by @trymirage, @Picsart, and @tavus hint at where this is going, but the creative tools for this new medium are only just being invented. We’re witnessing the dawn of a new creative medium. Like every revolution before it, it’ll look weird and a little "sloppy" before it looks brilliant. -- If you’re a founder, creative, or Generator building in this new wave, we at @Sequoia would love to hear from you. You can reach out via the normal channels to any of our partners, or feel free to pitch my Delphi about the future of consumer AI: http://delphi.ai/jesslee.