The next phase of the AI revolution has begun.
On October 1, OpenAI unveiled Sora 2, the first social media platform whose purpose is to distribute premium-grade AI-generated content. Its arrival marks a watershed moment for the creator economy — and for the comedians trying to make waves within it.
Before Sora, AI video tools existed largely as technical curiosities, offering glimpses of what might one day be possible. Even the first iteration of Sora, introduced in February 2024, was primitive in comparison to the new model. While it demonstrated the potential of generative video as a medium — an entirely new content type that might one day take over the internet — sound hadn’t yet been integrated, and the video output itself largely lacked in realism.
But with the advent of Sora 2, the future is here — and disruption is inevitable. Now, anyone can produce studio-quality audiovisual content from a prompt, collapsing traditional barriers of cost and geography. Already underway, the explosion of polished AI-generated content across social media feeds will shift the constraint among creators from resources to ideas: Whether you’re creating a short film, a commercial, or what have you, a lack of funding or equipment is no longer a concern.
To Erik Hammer, AI’s intrusion into creative spaces is a disruption “on par, or even more impactful” than that taking place when the world went from painting to photography, or live theater to film. A venture capitalist whose Marquee Ventures makes “early-stage technology investments in sports, media and entertainment” — with the AI-powered animation company Animaj in his portfolio — Hammer sees AI as an “underlying technology” that is now being built into the very foundation of society.
For digital creators’ purposes, the technology takes two forms. “It’s like a picks-and-shovels approach, where it’s giving creators or IP owners the ability to do more than they have in the past, or it’s being used to actually create content,” he explains. “One is an enablement tool, and the other is a totally new production medium.”
Unpacking all the implications of AI for entertainment would necessitate the writing of volumes. Ideally, volumes you could keep updating over time, given the technology’s ongoing evolution at an exponential pace. So for the purposes of this piece, let’s focus on what Hammer calls the shovel — AI as a production medium, the resulting product, and what its integration into the social media scroll will mean for stand-up comics.
AI’S IPHONE MOMENT
Danny Frenkel, co-founder of Punchup Live — a platform built to help comedians engage more directly with fans — likens our current moment to a generational technological leap.
Taking the cell phone as an example, he says, “Every technology is kind of the same. There’s a moment where it starts and you’re just like, ‘All right, cool. We have cell phones; we have a phone with us at all times, but I’m still using it to make phone calls.’”
Then came the BlackBerry, “where it was like, ‘All right, cool. Now we can use it to send emails.’ And then the iPhone launched and it was like, ‘Oh, wow. There’s a whole developer ecosystem that’s making apps. It’s a whole giant touchscreen that can play videos in super high resolution. It’s got a GPS device, an accelerometer, Bluetooth. What is all the stuff that we can do here?’”
The moment we’re living through, Frenkel argues, is AI’s iPhone moment — one where a profoundly powerful new technology is introduced that makes it impossible to conceive of where things are heading. If the iPhone gave rise to entire new economies of content and attention, he says AI is now poised to do the same. The leap isn’t just about machines becoming more capable; it’s about the infrastructure of the internet itself reconfiguring around human-prompted, machine-generated creations. This is to say that the social platforms that once depended on human creators for an endless stream of content are on the brink of transformation, themselves.
“There have been [several] major shifts in modern [social] content, let’s say. The first origin of content was individuals — so, you and I sharing pictures of our dogs,” Frenkel reflects. “The second was TikTok coming about, when it really shifted towards influencers and creators. So, a lot of people watching a few people’s content.”
Frenkel calls the current moment “a resetting of content types where it’s unclear who exactly is going to be creating the content — but what’s going to be generating the content are these AI models.”
For now, Frenkel acknowledges, “you have to use a little bit of your imagination” to see where things are going with Sora and AI-generated content. We’re “super, super early” in the process, particularly given that for the moment, Sora 2 is invite-only. Still, AI video began its takeover of social even before the introduction of this new app. Those who do have access can now take their Sora creations and upload them to mainstream social media platforms, like Instagram and TikTok. And as Frenkel sees it, these platforms will “inevitably” soon be integrating their own alternatives to OpenAI’s app — refusing to “lose people’s time spent.”
EXISTENTIAL FEARS
For most artists, what Sora 2 represents is nothing less than an existential threat — an automation of jobs and workflows that could very well leave legions of filmmakers and craftspeople on the dole. This is something that Hollywood’s guilds have railed against, from the introduction of ChatGPT, to the WGA & SAG strikes of 2023, and up to the present. Talk of agencies vying to sign AI “actress” Tilly Norwood has riled up actors, with studios and agencies increasingly sounding the alarm on what’s to come from Sora 2.
A second big fear with AI-generated video — which extends beyond entertainment and into every aspect of society — is its creation of a world in which people are unable to trust their own eyes. Per David Nelson, a veteran filmmaker and content creator who serves as Director of the Mixed Reality Lab at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, “The uncanny is nearly gone, if not gone. So [it’s going to be] really hard to distinguish — especially when you’re looking on your phone quickly, not with a lot of discernment — what’s real and what’s fake.”
The quality of AI is becoming so good, says one manager, that someday soon, “we aren’t going to be able to tell the difference, to the naked eye,” between what’s real and what’s AI.
This is something that should concern every actor and every comedian, alike. Already, Sora 2 has tried its hand at replicating stand-up clips, not to mention screen icons living and dead.
A third concern with AI video is the degrading of value, when it comes to artistry. If consuming real, human-based art is like eating your vegetables, says comedian Liz Miele, scrolling through Sora 2 is like downing a sleeve of Oreos — “empty calories.”
LIMITED TIME & INFINITE CONTENT
For comedians, though, the immediate fear with AI video is less about being out-and-out replaced. It’s about visibility — the ability to surface in a hyper-saturated algorithmic sea. It used to be the case that comics would use television appearances, like a Tonight Show spot, to promote their specials and boost awareness of their tours. But in our current era of cord-cutting, social media platforms have become the go-to vehicle for helping comics to connect with their fans. In recent years, it’s mostly been about short-form video discovery through the likes of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, which serve as a marketing funnel.
Even before Open AI’s bombshell, culture-transforming introduction of ChatGPT, says Marquee Ventures’ Hammer, social media platforms had become overwhelming. While they started out as “a very powerful way to connect directly with friends and family,” what they morphed into is “this distribution tool to serve up content that tries to sell you things.”
In an age of endless distractions, Punchup’s Frenkel says, AI video will now just be “another thing competing for your time.” This is not to say, of course, that this kind of content will wind up consuming the majority of people’s time in the scroll. “But is it 10%?” asks Frenkel. “Is it 20%?”
Already, according to Forbes, AI-generated images constitute 71% of social media material. So, for comedians, the concern is two-fold. Emerging comics who have yet to build a solid fan base will struggle more than ever to cut through the noise — and even for comics with large existing audiences, this will be a headache. There’s just no way AI content is not taking away a certain percentage of eyeballs from all existing content online, including that created by comedians.
“The whole point is there’s only 24 hours in a day. There’s only so much time you can spend watching content,” says Frenkel. “So if there are 11 million views on whatever Twitter video that was AI generated, those are 11 million impressions that could have gone to Shane Gillis. Similarly, if you’re watching a long-form video of AI, that could have gone to a podcast.”
For those not buying traffic, the AI revolution may impact the ability to promote live tours and otherwise meaningfully engage with their their fans. Presumably, this would of course affect the moving of tickets.
Already, a rep said, it’s been getting harder to get people to buy tickets, even with consistent social promotion. Uncertain of the economy’s stability, people are being cautious with their money. This downslide amplifies an economic correction in the live space, following a years-long explosion of business post-Covid. So the comedy business is hardly in need of another wrench in the works.
THE UPSIDE
Of course, Frenkel will be the first to tell you that the impact of Sora 2 will not be “a tomorrow thing,” but rather something felt over time. Live comedy is here to stay, sources agreed, and there will actually be a premium placed on this kind of experience amid the AI takeover, in the same way it was embraced when the N95 masks came off.
It also may be the case that comedians can find ways to benefit from access to AI platforms, making fun promo videos to get the word out about their shows that they otherwise couldn’t afford to produce. Perhaps they can make compelling use of Sora 2’s cameo feature, allowing users to create and build clips around a synthetic version of themselves. Already, I’ve spoken with multiple comics who have tinkered with Sora 2.
“I feel like every time I’ve tried to say, from the beginning of social media, ‘Nah, I’m not going to get Facebook; I got a MySpace. Nah, I’m not going to get on Instagram; I got a Facebook,’ it’s only hurt me, delaying the process,” comedian Ian Edwards told me. “So I’ve been messing around with it. I made some Sora videos today.”
Undoubtedly, some comedians will make productive, and perhaps even lucrative use of new tools at their disposal. “But realistically speaking,” says Frenkel, “it is going to inevitably be a different group of people who are the best at making this new type of content. And so some time spent and eyeballs are going to shift to these people.”
NEW MARKETING MECHANICS
For comics, then, marketing methods will almost certainly have to change. To be clear, our sources aren’t recommending that anyone get off of social media. Said a manager, “I don’t think that we have a strong, more guerrilla tactic in comedy yet for being able to sell tickets.”
But she and Frenkel agree that stand-ups will need to “get more creative” with their promotional materials if they want their business to thrive, embracing opportunities to foster a more direct line to fans outside of social platforms.
“I believe that email lists, text lists and having a website that you’ve created with strong back-end analytics is the strongest foundation you can have for understanding who your audience is,” the manager said. “Social media analytics only go so far, and understanding where your audience is clicking in from, whether it’s to sign up for your email list or to buy a ticket, is crucial.”
Frenkel’s Punchup Live is one resource that currently exists to allow comedians to engage more directly with their fans and assert more ownership over that relationship. Lizrd Mail, an emerging app from Miele, is another.
Artists accustomed to juggling a portfolio of business accounts might not love the idea of adding new direct-to-fan channels to their rotation — more accounts to manage daily or weekly. But they may find themselves enjoying the experience in comparison to social media platforms, which were always highly imperfect systems presenting their own obstacles to success for creators. It’s a relief, Miele says, to not have to “bring the entire internet into the equation,” instead making a direct line on Lizrd Mail to people who are already invested in her work.
“I have 172,000 fans on Instagram, and I have a bunch on all social media. But in the last couple of years, it almost doesn’t even matter because even if I have a video go viral… I had a video get almost 3 million views. You look at the analytics, only 30% of my fans saw it,” Miele shares.
This makes her wonder, “What’s the point of following people?”
SOCIAL MEDIA’S LIMITATIONS
The mainstream social platforms’ priority, Miele explains, is “growth of new people. But also, you have to basically pay to play. I’m giving [the platforms] free content so that they can hook people onto the website, and in exchange, I can talk to my fans.”
On social media, she notes, you also have a very limited window to make a new fan and convert them into somebody you can engage with off app. “If you followed me today, you would start seeing my stuff for the next couple of weeks. And if you don’t interact with it, you’ll never see me again,” she explains. “If you interact with it, hopefully we’ll continue to see each other. But in that short window, converting them to my mailing list or to something where I can actually talk to them and then having them see a live show where I actually make money…I think that’s why people are liking things like a Substack, where it’s an opt-in kind of culture.”
It’s frustrated Miele to see the internet change in such a way that “there’s more advertisements on the internet than there are on TV.” It’s agonizing to be at the mercy of constant algorithm changes, and the ability to connect with fans aside, social media platforms are not even ideal for freedom of expression, which is obviously at the heart of her art form.
“You can’t curse; I have to bleep out ‘sh*t on the internet [or risk being demonetized]. That’s crazy. Or bleep out the word ‘rape’ because people won’t see it,” she says. “Even if you’re trying to tell people, ‘Don’t go here, people get raped.’”
PRO TIPS
While we’ll be walking into a new normal at a global level very soon, we’re still near the beginning of AI-generated video’s evolution. Every creator is learning in public — but for now, there are some clear takeaways as to best practices for comedians pressing on into the future.
“What I do think is always going to be true is that great branding and great marketing is always going to reign superior, regardless of the kind of content that you’re creating. Knowing who you are, who your audience is, who you’re writing for,” said a rep. “Is it yourself? Is it your peers? Is it a completely different audience? What are you making and who are you making it for?”
She argues that knowing who you are, and what you alone have to offer, is going to be “the most crucial thing in making sure you stand above whatever the appetite is for AI in the marketplace, which I don’t think is ever going to be high on a meaningful level.”
Every comedian should consider themselves a brand, she explains, and it would be a good idea for them to orient some of their promo videos around their interests outside of comedy, in an effort to pierce through the internet more broadly than they might have before.
“For example, if a comedian has showcased on their platform that they love to golf, making videos about the cities that you’re going to be going to on the road while you’re on the golf course, and making people feel as though they have a more parasocial connection to you, I think is going to be crucial to getting people to engage in becoming part of the fan base,” says the rep. “I always encourage comedians to get creative about how you can integrate comedy into other things that you love, because you’re then not only capturing comedy fans online, you’re also capturing fans of whatever your interests are, and getting integrated in those online communities, too. So you’re building a fan base that’s fully your own.”
Whatever content comics are putting out online, she says, should feel like a teaser — “because that’s how you get people out to shows.”
To Miele, the big takeaway for comedians who want to build an enduring career is that “in this economy, if somebody f*king buys a ticket, puts on pants, leaves their house, comes and sees you… you need to stay connected with them. However you do that is your choice. But to not cherish that person, whether it’s 10 people or 4,000 people, is a misuse of your fan base.”
Taking care of her fans can be as simple, she says, as sending free stickers to people who’ve signed up for her mailing list.
“People that leave the house for you are a special breed of people in this world,” she says, “and you need to cherish them as a live performer.”
This story originated as part of Deadline’s Comedy Means Business newsletter, offering an in-depth look at the latest in the comedy business. Sign up here.
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