Would you watch an AI version of your favorite content creator or media personality?

The big heads at Fox and NBC are betting you will.

A few weeks ago, Fox announced they’re developing “Sports AI w/ Colin Cowherd.”

This week, NBC revealed their creating an Andy Cohen AI.

AI will be trained on thousands of hours of content created by these two and then be used to deliver on the spot personalized takes for users based on their tastes and preferences.

In many ways, it makes sense that these big media institutions are taking big swings at AI.

As we’ve discussed, it’s dissemination into nearly every aspect of our lives is inevitable…except perhaps in some of the ways where it matters most.

Allow me to explain.

Cowherd and Cohen are the two biggest personalities at Fox and Bravo/NBC respectively.

Key word: personalities.

They have built their massive influence culturally because of their unique traits, hard work, star quality, and ability to capture an audience.

Not everyone can do this. In fact, hardly anyone can. That’s why there aren’t more of them.

But of course, the landscape in media is shifting. Their original platform formats occupy a growing no mans land.

We’ve talked about the new media barbell: long form uninterrupted podcasts on one end, short form tiktok style content on the other. Everything else is struggling.

The old guard of “shows” with commercial breaks just isn’t cutting it anymore.

Sure, both Cowherd and Cohen have moved into podcasting, and are clipped into oblivion, but they aren’t necessarily native to that format in the way the younger generation of “creators” are.

They still have their loyal audiences, but the media landscape is cutthroat and driven by fear of losing marketshare - or, more appropriately, “attention-share.”

So when media executives see AI on the horizon, they feel compelled to adopt it in order to outmaneuver their rivals.

In doing so, I believe this signals a reactionary response more than a proactive one, and they aren’t thinking about why these guys are so popular from “human-proof” principles.

Colin Cowherd and Andy Cohen are 1 of 1’s. Creating an AI version of them for mass distribution and risk of over-saturation is antithetical to their prominence on principle.

Of course the growth of media distribution has made them more prominent…but it was always authentically “them” on screen…not an artificial version.

There is value in scarcity. it is possible to have “too much of a good thing.”

There are other ways for Ai to enhance new media, but mass disimenation of individualism is not one of them "(and - I would argue - not even possible).

I see this as a dillution of the core product and the quality that established it.

People listen and follow these personalties because they:

AI versions of them can pattern match, but not replace those qualities.

That’s my take…but we’ll see how this plays out.

RP WEEKLY!!!!