Why TikTok and YouTube Creators Get Paid Thousands of Dollars by Google and OpenAI for Videos They Did not Post
AI is insatiable; it needs to feed on data to evolve. OpenAI, Google, and other AI companies pay thousands of dollars to content creators and YouTube or TikTok channel owners for unpublished videos that are not available to watch on their channels.
Elon Musk said a few days ago that “AI is running out of data,” so AI companies are doing everything they can to find it. It’s essential to continuing to train AI, and it’s the only known way for it to improve. Unpublished videos from YouTubers or TikTokers are especially valuable.
After initially bypassing copyrights, paying content owners later, and using all public data, AI ran out of resources. But they found a solution: paying creators for videos they hadn’t posted yet.
$4 per minute of video to feed AI
According to a Bloomberg investigation, companies like OpenAI, Google, Moonvalley, and others are reaching out to content creators to offer them money for videos they neglect or those they didn’t post.
These videos are especially important because they are not available online, and therefore other competing AI systems do not have them. So it is an advantage.
According to Bloomberg, AI companies pay between $1 and $4 per minute of video, depending on the video’s features. They pay more for 4K videos and those with unconventional footage, such as drone footage or 3D animation.
Additionally, unused videos from independent content creators who don't post on traditional networks are paid double the amount, compared to unused videos from content creators on YouTube, TikTok, etc., who only receive between $1 and $2 per minute of video.
AI companies are paying creators on YouTube and TikTok thousands of dollars for videos that have been dumped or never uploaded online. AI needs data, and if their competitors don’t have it, that’s even better.