The creator economy is splitting in two.
30/12/25
The creator economy is splitting in two.
On one side, marketing teams are quietly shifting budget into AI-generated faces that can film all night, never miss a deadline, and cost less than a single human campaign.
On the other, the best human creators are raising prices, saying “no” more often, and repositioning themselves as founders, not freelancers.
It’s not “AI vs humans.”
It’s commodity content vs strategic partnership.
Most brands are asking the wrong question.
Not:
“Should we use AI creators?”
But:
“Which jobs in our creator system belong to AI, which belong to humans – and what’s the risk if we get that mix wrong?”
Where AI Creators Actually Make Sense
AI creators are a volume and velocity play.
If you need:
Dozens of product demos for A/B tests
Variations on hooks, angles, and crops
Always-on content for long-tail channels
…AI will beat humans on cost, speed, and consistency every time.
AI creators are good at:
Rapid ideation and concept testing
Perfectly on-brand repetition
High-frequency posts where no one expects a “relationship”
Compliance-heavy scripts where every word matters
A single AI creator licence can produce the equivalent of tens of thousands in human production fees over a year.
Used in the right place, it’s a pure efficiency upgrade.
Where AI Breaks
AI creators don’t build trust.
They don’t have a life.
They don’t change.
You don’t buy a ticket to see them speak.
You don’t feel proud when they win.
You don’t quote their story in a boardroom.
That’s where the line is.
The creator economy’s centre of gravity is drifting toward operator-creators:
Founders who share the behind-the-scenes
Subject-matter experts who ship real products
Personalities who build communities, not just content
An AI avatar can mimic the look of that, but not the underlying reality.
You can rent an AI creator.
You can’t build a genuine long-term partnership with one.
Architecting the Portfolio
The way through is to treat AI as a sleeve in the portfolio, not a replacement for it.
Think in tiers:
Tier 1 – Human Strategic Partners
Your core holdings. 1–3 humans who carry your narrative, show up in rooms that matter, and can sit across from your CMO or founder as a peer.
This is never AI.
This is where 30–40% of your creator budget lives.
Tier 2 – Human Campaign Creators
Operators and specialists who come in for product launches, verticals, or specific formats.
Some AI support around them is fine (editing, variants, testing), but the face and POV are human.
Expect 40–50% of your budget here.
Tier 3 – AI Content
The testing lab and the long-tail feed. Explainers, demos, modular assets, fills between big moments.
This is where AI can run on rails.
10–20% of budget is usually enough to feel the benefit without warping the system.
The point isn’t the exact percentages.
The point is clear separation of jobs:
Humans: trust, narrative, category weight
AI: volume, iteration, feed coverage
When those get blurred, you create a bigger problem.
The Cannibalisation Risk
Over-rotating to AI doesn’t just “save money”.
It quietly devalues the very humans you can’t afford to lose.
If your feed becomes 40–50% AI output that looks “good enough”, your best creators will inevitably ask:
“Why am I worth £5k a post if a synthetic face can do this for £50?”
At that point, they only have two logical moves:
Raise their prices and reposition even harder as founder-operators
Step away from brands who see them as interchangeable with a model
Both reduce your access to the top end of the market.
Smart brands are doing the opposite:
They use AI to cover the low-leverage content they never had time or budget to make, and they reallocate the savings up into better human partnerships, not away from them.
AI fills the gaps.
Humans hold the line.
The Real Question for 2026
By 2026, the most useful question inside a brand won’t be:
“Are we using AI creators yet?”
It’ll be:
“What job is this creator doing in our P&L?”
If the job is:
Generate variants for paid tests
Cover three extra markets overnight
Keep the always-on feed alive
…AI is a strong candidate.
If the job is:
Move a buying committee
Anchor your category story
Make your founder look smart in front of investors
Build a loyal, thinking audience over years
…that’s human-only territory.
The brands that win won’t be the ones that went “all-in on AI” or “refused to touch it”.
They’ll be the ones who:
Protected the top of their creator stack as human, operator-led, founder-level
Used AI ruthlessly and unapologetically for the commodity layer
Were explicit about the mix in their portfolio, not vague
AI isn’t coming to “replace creators”.
It’s coming to expose whether you understand what each creator in your system is actually for.