Generative AI and Content-Creator Economy: Evidence from Online Content Creation Platforms

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have emerged as a disruptive force in the content-creator economy. In this paper, we aim to understand how the integration of Generative AI with online content creation platforms affects its main players: content creators. Specifically, we leverage quasi-experiments on two leading online content creation platforms in Asia -- Lofter and Graffiti Kingdom -- to quantify the effect of adopting or prohibiting Generative AI tools on their content creators. Our findings reveal that introducing a Generative AI tool on Lofter led to a significant decrease in its content creators' activities on the platform. Conversely, the prohibition of Generative AI on Graffiti Kingdom produced more nuanced effects. Although the overall effect of this prohibition is not statistically significant, content creators who continued using the platform after the prohibition (i.e., non-churners) showed an increase in their activities. Moreover, we demonstrate that content creators with heightened copyright concerns are more inclined to decrease their activities after the adoption of Generative AI on Lofter, while the more popular content creators on the platform are less likely to decrease their activities. This paper provides important insights for policymakers and content creation platforms.