Shortly after the beginning of the year, a chatbot called ChatGPT became popular on the Internet. It accumulated more than 100 million active users in just 2 months after its launch, becoming the fastest growing consumer application in history. This product was launched by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence company under Microsoft, on November 30, 2022. ChatGPT can conduct conversations by learning and understanding human language, can interact according to the context of the chat, and can even complete tasks such as writing emails, video scripts, copywriting, translation, and code, becoming a "favorite" for companies and students. Subsequently, American technology giants such as Microsoft and Google invested heavily in related tracks and significantly increased their investment in the field of artificial intelligence; domestic Internet giants such as Baidu, Alibaba, and NetEase are also intensively carrying out the development of "ChatGPT-like" products.
The popularity of ChatGPT has shown us the great potential of AI technology in the Web3 era, and has also drawn our attention to the development space of AIGC. ChatGPT is a direction of application in the field of AIGC. They all rely on the technical core of AI automatic generation to demonstrate unlimited commercial application value. According to 6 pen, 10%-30% of the image content on the Internet will be generated by AI in the next five years, which is expected to create a market space of more than 60 billion. Taking into account the rapid increase in content demand for the next generation of the Internet, foreign business consulting agency Acumen Research and Consulting predicts that the AIGC market size will reach 110 billion US dollars in 2030.
In fact, AIGC first entered the public eye in August 2022, when a game designer Jason M. Allen published the AIGC painting "Space Opera", which won the first prize of "Digital Art/Digital Retouching Photos" and attracted worldwide attention. Now, in less than a year, ChatGPT has become a "new top stream" and has regained attention for AIGC. So how powerful is AIGC? As a technical means, what kind of vitality does it give to content creation? Let us approach AIGC, feel the potential of AI-generated content, and explore feasible ways for developers to make good use of AIGC.
What is AIGC?
AIGC refers to the use of artificial intelligence technology to generate content. It is considered to be a new way of content creation after PGC and UGC. The new generation of AIGC technology processing models can cover the creation of text, voice, code, image, video, robot action, etc. AIGC can surpass the traditional form of technology-generated content in terms of creativity, expressiveness, and personalization, and present the creator's ideas more vividly. Some people also say: "AIGC, NFT, and VR are the three major infrastructures of the metaverse and Web3, representing a new direction for future technological creation." In fact, AIGC not only has its outstanding tool value, but also contains infinite commercial growth potential.
Tool Value
As a technical tool, AIGC can mainly improve creative efficiency, especially for practitioners in creative industries such as art, film and television, advertising, games, and programming. It can assist practitioners in their daily work and is expected to create more amazing works. The low cost and high efficiency it brings are conducive to the construction of a large-scale production market. In addition, in terms of capturing inspiration, AIGC can help experienced authors innovate interactive forms and provide space for creativity.
commercial value
Gartner predicts that by 2025, generative AI will account for 10% of all generated data. According to the analysis of Generative AI: A Creative New World, AIGC has the potential to generate trillions of dollars in economic value. Improvements and enrichments in digital humans, virtual scenes, digital content, graphic and audio-visual related products can enable AIGC to bring more business value and returns.
The triple challenge of AIGC development
"The AIGC market is like a giant with a bomb in its arms. It looks very powerful on the outside, but it has a fatal threat that has not yet been resolved. If this threat is not resolved, the development of the industry will eventually be limited."
Behind the rapid growth of anything, there are hidden dangers. AIGC helps content creation and dissemination quickly, but it also exposes many "vulnerabilities".
Difficulty in pursuing ownership of works
According to the relevant national copyright laws, the author can only be a natural person, legal person or unincorporated organization. Then the subject of AIGC creation is artificial intelligence technology itself, which does not have the attribute characteristics of "author". If various platforms use AIGC to generate various pictures, texts and other content, resulting in commercial disputes or accountability, then who should come forward to coordinate and bear the responsibility, the platform, the open source, or the generator? Therefore, major Web3 platforms are very cautious when introducing the concept of AIGC, and developers' exploration of AIGC has become a "trapped beast fight" under the reality.
Difficulty in realizing business models
The AIGC model has certain limitations, and most of the generated content is still a long way from commercial standards. In other words, in order to realize commercial realization of technology-produced content, it is ultimately necessary to learn professional knowledge from different industries and develop content output models that conform to different categories. Although the ChatGPT chatbot currently launched by Open AI can help people complete tasks such as revising papers, typing code, and writing copy, the content generated by these tool-assisted tools is relatively "universal". Once it involves in-depth content from different industries, human power is still needed for research and judgment.
Difficulty trusting the technical framework
As we all know, blockchain technology has become a reason for people to trust it because of its transparency and traceability. It is also because of its high degree of decentralization that it has achieved a stable trust relationship between project platform developers, commercial investors, and users, and promoted various asset transactions and project cooperation. However, AIGC originates from a "tool-based" technical thinking, relying on the platforms on which they are deployed, and has not yet formed a complete framework system for information confidentiality and responsibility confirmation. At present, most users, driven by curiosity, use AIGC products such as artificial chat machines, intelligent voice mutual assistance, and painting creation generators to assist in their personal life, work, and decision-making, but whether the input information is in a "regulatory vacuum zone"? This is unknown.
Integrate AIGC into the Web3 world
The emergence of new technologies often requires the reconstruction of a new business ecosystem. The three difficulties faced by AIGC in its development mentioned above are mainly due to the identification of creation and the repair of the technical framework. Therefore, actively thinking about leveraging Web3 and giving full play to the role of Web3 infrastructure may help AIGC solve its problems.
DAO Injection AIGC Model
The popular keyword "DAO (decentralized autonomous organization)" in Web3 can design a set of reference management operation modes for AIGC. Participants achieve decentralized autonomy through a set of rules that can be automatically executed and cannot be tampered with deployed on the blockchain. The reason for thinking about "autonomy" is that AIGC needs to "fine-tune the model" according to different industry subdivisions in the specific commercial process, so it is impossible to establish a universal model that is applicable everywhere (can a certain one effectively motivate all parties? Is it fair and reasonable? It is necessary to constantly propose rules, verify rules and form executable rules).
In addition, the DAO model formed by multiple interest roles can be applied to the platform management of AIGC. The creators, original artwork owners, AIGC operators, and blockchain validators are placed in four role sections, where the income generated by the creators can be distributed to the other three participants, and the income share is determined by regular voting rights. In this model, the commercial value comes from the creators and is distributed to the original artwork owners, AIGC operators, and blockchains. These participants can be integrated into a DAO through Web3, making the use and communication of AIGC more convenient and efficient.
Taking the advertising marketing platform as an example, the DAO + AIGC management path can be understood as:
Dedicated marketing copywriter AIGC generates content and inputs value to assist in daily or special design work;
After the owner of the advertising copy uploads the work, he or she waits for the work to be certified as an NFT, owns the copyright and benefits from it;
AIGC operators can join the DAO, govern through voting and proposals on ad copy, and participate in distribution;
The blockchain validator will meet the verification needs of the entire system, examine key indicators such as download volume and call volume, and ensure fairness and transparency;
When using DAO to empower the management of AIGC, we must also pay attention to the potential risks of the DAO governance model and seek solutions to resolve them. At present, the application model of AIGC is changing in many ways, and some commercial lawbreakers have taken the opportunity to mix in and steal user privacy data. Therefore, DAO should have sufficient flexibility and adaptability to face the ever-changing environment and needs, and increase the control of blockchain validators and platform operators to ensure that the environment is highly trustworthy and the operation traceability is more thorough. Overall, DAO, as a new form of organization, provides AIGC with a practical and autonomous transparent mechanism. This concept is worth developers' continued exploration and thinking to create a more superior technical processing environment for AIGC.
Building the AIGC paradigm of the future
With the continuous iteration of AIGC, its commercial value and market territory are also gradually expanding. At present, if AIGC is to meet the development of the metaverse and complete high-quality and high-precision content output, it still needs technical innovation. How to combine the concept of the metaverse to output AIGC explosive content? How to use AIGC to generate NFT artworks faster? These development directions require the addition of language processing technology, AIGC generation algorithm model, and communication network infrastructure.
On the other hand, from capital increase to exploration of application scenarios, the gaps in AIGC operation are expected to be gradually filled. The "pan-AIGC" model of "module splitting + personalized recommendation" is also in the plans of various platforms. After all, AIGC serving different industry sectors such as advertising marketing, real estate, and finance has both differences and commonalities. If a "ubiquitous AIGC model" can be created, it will not only save time and effort for program development, but also allow the public to use AIGC in an "integrated" way.
Web3 requires an efficient, autonomous, and flexible technology application system, and AIGC is just such an important tool that can penetrate into our daily lives. Let us look forward to AIGC becoming a helper in life and a accelerator in work in the Web3 world, truly achieving "quality and efficiency improvement".