It’s not news that luxury fashion has woken up to the potential importance of the secondary market. As the CEO of One of None, I have spent the last two years talking to fashion companies about the issue of authentication. Brands primarily see the problem through the lens of reputation protection and address it via litigation. But the missing provenance from luxury resales is much more than that. 

DeShone Kizer
Founder and CEO of One of None, a marketplace for digitally-linked limited editions across fine art, fashion, & collectibles.


The Future is
Authenticated, Brands
Risk Missing the
Opportunity

Provenance – or the lack of it – lies at the heart of a radical, transformational shift in the marketplace. Solve the provenance conundrum and you shape the future of luxury sales – and positively impact every player in the creator-collector-consumer-investor nexus. Continue to kick the can down the road, and the secondary marketplace doesn’t go away, it simply grows disfigured and misshapen. (Cue the Darth Vader music.)

Provenance has dramatically increased in importance because the secondary market is now unrecognizable from even just a few years ago, upended by a convergence of new buyer preferences and new technology platforms: think peer-to-peer digital exchanges such as Poshmark and eBay, and curated marketplaces such as StockX and Goat. 

Secondary markets are

becoming the primary place

for buyers

Driving this change are investors and collectors who have passionately embraced the secondary market despite the brands they love staying on the resale sidelines. Stats from the 2023 thredUp Resale Report show that younger buyers increasingly look to the secondary markets to make a purchase before checking the primary market. The same study shows that 9 in 10 luxury resale buyers end up making a full-price purchase from the brands they shop in the secondary market – and 75% of luxury resale buyers have also contributed to the market as sellers.

The financial scale of the secondary market has correspondingly changed, too. The global luxury resale market is estimated to be nearly $33 billion today – and is expected to balloon to $52 billion by 2026. That’s an eye-popping 62% increase in just three years that’s simply too big to leave to the lawyers. 

At the same time, the lines between consumers, collectors, and investors have increasingly blurred. Those Hermes Birkin Bags or Nike Travis Scott Air Jordan 1’s not only appreciate exponentially in value – they are resold again and again in future years. And as they do, the same doubt about provenance – and opportunity for savvy counterfeiters to enter the stream – reemerges at each new transaction point. 

Brands are

fighting

the wrong

counterfeiting battle

Consensus estimates place the impact of counterfeiting in the luxury goods market above $600 billion annually. It’s no wonder counterfeiters are digging in their Louboutin heels and feeling confident they can win at legal whack-a-mole. 

LVMH employs over 60 lawyers and spends nearly $17 million each year on legal fees related to anti-counterfeiting lawsuits. Chanel won an $11.5 million settlement with TheRealReal over counterfeits sold as authentic Chanel pieces. Nike is also currently working through several lawsuits with StockX for selling digital products marketed as 100% authentic. It’s a good fight, but ultimately a drop in the bucket.

Instead of fighting these counterfeiting battles in the courts they could simply make it easier for consumers to know what they’re buying is real. A focus on working with secondary marketplaces on using unbreakable digital certification would not eliminate counterfeits entirely but make them far less valuable and sought after.

By creating a unique digital ID – essentially a digital counterpart or certificate – for every luxury physical item, creators forever ‘mark’ the item as a one-of-a-kind. 

In the fine art world, physical works are sold with paper Certificates of Authenticity that validate a work’s origins and buyer history. Digital authentication does the same, but via a mechanism that cannot be lost, copied or hacked – and is portable to any digital ecosystem. 

The resale

royalty opportunity

Importantly, these digital certificates are already ‘future-proofed’ in anticipation of the next phase of the digital secondary marketplace – resale royalties. This is the concept of a creator customizing the digital certificate at the outset so that for every future resale, whether public or private, they receive a predetermined fractional royalty payment. 

This option can be existentially important to an emerging solo artist or creator who is just beginning to make a name for themselves. For large, mega-brands, they’ll need to weigh the pros of royalty revenue vs the cons of buyer push-back – but at a minimum it’s something that must be discussed in C-suites given the market’s new dynamics.

Like a song royalty, fractional payments add up. In the near future, these royalties can increasingly become critical components of business plans and revenue streams. 

Our internal models at my company, One of None, predict that in the next decade – if major brands overcome the authentication challenge – they will be generating at least 20% to 30% of their limited edition sales revenue from precisely these digitally-linked secondary marketplaces. And that’s the conservative estimate.

Brands need to get off the sidelines and play an active role in shaping the future of secondary marketplaces. Digital transformations happen when they make good business sense. The authentication solution is the latest example of this – and it’s about to reach its tipping point and rapidly scale.

Do you agree with this?
Do you disagree or have a completely different perspective?
We’d love to know

More

The Fashion Industry Treats Tech Like a Seasonal Trend

Ownership Has Fallen Out of Fashion Recap

Out With The New, In With The Old

The Future is Authenticated, Brands Risk Missing the Opportunity

Brands that AI forecast, fall. Brands that react, rise.

IP Law Applies to Physical and Digital Fashion Goods

Ownership has fallen out of fashion

AI forecasting is essential to fashion’s survival

Brands

that AI

forecast,

fall.

 Brands

that react,

rise.

Dr. Ahmed Zaidi
Co-Founder and Chief Executive of Hyran Technologies,
Visiting AI researcher at Cambridge University

Artificial intelligence is more and more frequently being used by brands for trend forecasting, taking into consideration variables such as consumer behavior, runway trends, and various trends in fabrication, colors, and other themes. What many do not realize, however, is that AI trend forecasting is contributing more to our textiles waste crisis than many other waste-generating culprits, like post-production disposal by consumers. I am deeply familiar with this issue, as I come from a family of textile manufacturers that have directly felt the consequences of inaccurate forecasts. 

AI forecasting is a noisy guess masquerading as an objective analysis — and manufacturers know it. My family suffered from not only an excess waste problem but was often put in financial distress when the forecast against which we bought and planned our raw materials was inevitably wrong. 

Attempting to predict the future with AI technologies is futile — particularly for production cycles exceeding more than a few seasons. Human behavior is largely unpredictable, and a virtually infinite number of unforeseen variables may impact the success of products once they reach stores, contributing to excess inventory and thus waste. That’s before we even account for everything that happened before those products were available for sale.

While predictive AI forecasting is a massively imperfect system, AI systems still can vastly improve sustainability efforts for brands by instead mitigating inventory risk. This can be achieved by narrowing production lead times, and allowing cross-collaboration between brands and their suppliers by unlocking agility and flexibility in the supply chain. To drive a sustainable and efficient supply requires multi-dimensional optimization, something humans struggle with but AI systems thrive at.

 

Cutting

pre-production

waste

Macro- and micro-trend forecasting have faced scrutiny by sustainability advocates who argue ever-changing seasonal textile trends and fast fashion are contributing to our waste crisis. But few have argued that AI modeling for predicting consumer behavior months or even years into the future is at fault, and even fewer have provided a clear alternative to this industry-wide practice. 

We have the tools to use AI for multi-dimensional supply chain optimization to shorten production lead times instead of using it for predicting future demand, which is a huge contributor to our tens of millions of tons of manufacturer-generated waste each year. Overproducing generated by AI forecasting — a kind of crystal ball system for attempting to predict unpredictable consumer behavior — is not only hurting our environment with textile waste, but it’s also detrimental to manufacturers and their working conditions. Inaccurate forecasts force manufacturers to make last-minute changes and work longer hours to meet the changes demand.

Regulators in regions of the US and abroad have proposed that brands pay up for their contributions to our global waste crisis, including by funding textile recycling programs by paying for the volume of products they produce. These policies, or “extended producer responsibility” (EPR) regulations, could look similar to programs used to reduce waste for things like batteries and mattresses — among other materials that can be difficult to recycle. They attempt to mitigate overproduction by holding the brands of these goods responsible. But as noted by Bloomberg, and as is often the case with these types of fees, it’s likely these companies would attempt to offset such fees by passing the costs to consumers.

That’s another way that AI could work to overhaul the production process and ultimately curb waste in ways that regulatory fees may not: this kind of modeling could help eliminate production waste before products reach consumers. By harnessing AI to eliminate waste and excess costs to brands from the earliest stages of product development, brands could potentially avoid damaging price-gouging to consumers while also minimizing the fees they pay for any waste they generate under such policy frameworks. 

Each year, around a trillion dollars is lost to markdown programs, making the economic benefits to brands using AI in this new, more proactive way clear. Furthermore, using AI for multi-dimensional supply chain optimization could also have far-reaching benefits to the fashion industry at large, including contributing to greater sustainability efforts and redistributing those costs to improving workers’ wages. For instance, if enough small- or medium-scale brands buy into this collaborative AI-driven information sharing at the earliest stages of product development, they stand to benefit tremendously from their combined spend at the materials level — perhaps even meeting or exceeding the spend of a singular large-label brand.

Forecasting

versus reactive

modeling

Convincing brands to break tradition with industry-wide practices is a clear hurdle, particularly for established heavyweights for whom change to existing systems is a slow process. Fashion houses with long-established manufacturer relationships may be more reluctant to explore alternative methods to supply chain navigation. But again, I’d argue there’s tremendous potential to smaller and medium-level brands as well as lower margin brands who, through collaboration and transparency made possible with AI optimization modeling — rather than futile forecasting — could see significant gains and recaptured profit by eliminating potential markdowns or post-production waste.

By viewing production from a risk perspective, it’s possible to approximate a brand’s carbon footprint not only from a single-product lifespan, but rather multiple lifespans: circular, remaking and secondary, and re-owning. As our textile waste crisis comes under increased scrutiny, brands have new opportunities to harness AI to ethically produce, both to their own benefit as well as to consumers and the environment.

Do you agree with this?
Do you disagree or have a completely different perspective?
We’d love to know

More

The Fashion Industry Treats Tech Like a Seasonal Trend

Ownership Has Fallen Out of Fashion Recap

Out With The New, In With The Old

The Future is Authenticated, Brands Risk Missing the Opportunity

Brands that AI forecast, fall. Brands that react, rise.

IP Law Applies to Physical and Digital Fashion Goods

Ownership has fallen out of fashion

AI forecasting is essential to fashion’s survival

IP LAW

APPLIES TO

PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL

FASHION

GOODS

Tony Iliakostas
Adjunct professor of Entertainment Law and IP at New York Law School

Why the Metaverse Creates Brand Identity and Authenticity Issues for Fashion Companies

Have you ever scrolled through eBay, StockX, Facebook Marketplace, or some other secondary marketplace and come across a pair of sneakers that catches your eye? Maybe there’s that luxury handbag that is normally outside your budget but a seller is selling the item for a significantly cheaper price. You pull the trigger and make the purchase, only to wait a week for the item to arrive and realize that the product was not truthfully advertised. In fact, upon further inspection, you realize that you bought a “dupe” – a fake.


The Battle Against Counterfeit Goods in Secondary Marketplaces is Significant

This is the unfortunate reality of secondary marketplaces. Some sellers will blatantly sell fake versions of real fashion products under the façade of the product being genuine. A 2018 study by the US Government Accountability Office found that about 40% of goods purchased on e-commerce websites are counterfeit products. This same study also determined that of the 32 million shipments processed by US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) in the year 2016, over 31,000 of them were seized containing products that infringed on the copyright, trademarks, or other IP rights belonging to major brands, including fashion-oriented brands. The estimated value of these seizures was over $1.3 billion. That’s nearly 3 times the valuation of the top 10 luxury fashion brands in 2023.

The sale of counterfeit goods has been a battle USCBP has consistently engaged in for years. USCBP recognizes the transport and sale of counterfeit goods as a federal offense that is punishable by a fine, prison time, or both if one is convicted of engaging in criminal copyright infringement or criminal trademark infringement. But aside from government intervention and enforcement, secondary marketplaces have come to recognize the growing trend of counterfeit goods sales on their platform. Thankfully, they have addressed this issue front and center. In addition to having a counterfeit goods policy, eBay has created authentication protocols that would ensure that any watch, handbag, or piece of jewelry sold is authenticated by a professional. Similarly, StockX (a marketplace known for selling sneakers) has its own verification process to ensure that any sneaker sold is legitimate. 

The biggest victims of counterfeit goods sales on secondary marketplaces are brands. In particular, fashion brands have been prone to infringement-worthy activity for decades. Behavior like this is well documented in “House of Gucci” when counterfeit Gucci products were being sold for a significant fraction of the cost during Gucci’s meteoric rise to fame. Fashion brands recognize that people are quick to flock to secondary marketplaces or even take a walk to places like Canal Street and get a fake product and compromise quality for the sake of saving money. 

New Media = New Opportunities for Infringement Activity

The culture of counterfeit fashion product sales has taken a new turn in recent years, as the budding NFT marketplace has become the new home of alleged “dupe” product sales. Many recent headlines have brought this matter to the forefront. Last year, Nike accused StockX of trademark infringement after StockX sold NFTs of sneakers to consumers who had purchased the same sneaker on their website. In the same allegation, Nike accused StockX of selling counterfeit Nike sneakers that were verified to be authentic. As significant as this Nike/StockX lawsuit is, it pales in comparison to a recent lawsuit involving the iconic Birkin bag.

When you think of Hermes, one of the most powerful and dynamic high fashion brands in the world, you think of its most popular and recognizable product: the Birkin bag. The price tag ranges anywhere between $10,000 and $40,000, with even diamond-covered Birkin selling at a robust $2 million. 

But what if you could buy a Birkin (well, maybe not a real one) for an extreme fraction of the cost? Enter stage left, MetaBirkins. MetaBirkins was conceived by artist Mason Rothschild in late 2021 during the NFT (non-fungible token) boom. The appeal of MetaBirkin NFTs is that they weren’t as expensive as actual Birkin bags. Priced at $450, these digital collectibles closely mimicked the Birkin’s design and generated a reported $450,000 in sales. However, Rothschild unknowingly violated Hermes' trademark and trade dress.

In January 2022, Hermes pursued a trademark and trade dress infringement lawsuit against Mason Rothschild. In their lawsuit, they alleged that Mason Rothschild’s use of the word “Birkin” violated the trademark rights to the Birkin name that is registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office. They also alleged that Mason Rothschild’s recreation of the Birkin bag in NFT form infringed on the trade dress of the Birkin bag that is also registered in the USPTO. According to the argument set forth by Hermes, Mason Rothschild’s use of the Birkin name and his recreation of the Birkin bag is enough to cause consumer confusion. 

Consumer confusion is a core element in trademark infringement lawsuits because it boils down to whether an infringer’s use of an existing trademark could lead people to believe that the infringement came from the original trademark owner. Here, Hermes provided actual data showing consumer confusion, especially because it was around the time that other fashion brands were jumping on the NFT bandwagon. Also, while MetaBirkins were considerably cheaper than an actual Birkin bag, it definitely was an expensive NFT, which seemed to be congruent to Birkin’s typically high price tag.

Mason Rothschild, on the other hand, argued that MetaBirkins was not trademark infringement but rather an exercise of free expression that is afforded to him as an artist under the 1st Amendment. In trademark infringement matters, a defendant can raise a 1st Amendment defense that came about thanks to the iconic Rogers v. Grimaldi decision. Rogers v. Grimaldi determined that an alleged infringer is not liable for trademark infringement if their use of someone else’s trademark was used in creative works of expression. Mason Rothschild argued that as an artist, he was expressing his vision no different than Andy Warhol did with his Campbell’s soup can series.

Unfortunately, though, the odds were not in Mason Rothschild’s favor, as the Southern District of New York found that MetaBirkins was not subject to protection under the 1st Amendment. Mason Rothschild sought an appeal from the SDNY, asking for a new trial and a re-review of the facts of the MetaBirkins case. However, the court quickly denied the request and even permanently enjoined Rothschild from profiting off of MetaBirkins NFTs and even owning any MetaBirkins-oriented domain names. This was essentially the last nail that sealed the coffin for MetaBirkins.

HERMES V. ROTHSCHILD

TAKEAWAYS FROM THE METABIRKINS LAWSUIT

There’s a lot to unpack from the MetaBirkins case, but there are so many valuable lessons to learn from this lawsuit that fashion brands should be aware of with the evolving landscape of newer media and intellectual property law:

#1

The Law Doesn’t Discriminate Between Digital and Physical Universe

While current IP law is a bit antiquated, it’s safe to say that the language of the Lanham Act (federal law governing trademarks), the Copyright Act of 1976, and other IP legislation is broad enough to cover existing media and media that are to come in the future. And yet, with the dawn of NFTs, the metaverse, generative artificial intelligence, and other newer media, people fail to understand that intellectual property law governs the digital universe as much as it governs the physical universe. 

#2

Brands need to protect their IP

While current IP law is a bit antiquated, it’s safe to say that the language of the Lanham Act (federal law governing trademarks), the Copyright Act of 1976, and other IP legislation is broad enough to cover existing media and media that are to come in the future. And yet, with the dawn of NFTs, the metaverse, generative artificial intelligence, and other newer media, people fail to understand that intellectual property law governs the digital universe as much as it governs the physical universe. 

#3

NFTs are a new breeding ground for infringements

Perhaps the biggest lesson to be learned is newer media like NFTs and the metaverse are highly unregulated. Existing law contains broad enough catch-all phrasing that could apply to them. The reality though is that NFTs and the metaverse are still the wild west. NFT creators are mindlessly using other people’s trademarks without thinking of the big-picture issues. In the same vein, brands have their hands full trying to inhibit infringements of their IP in real life and these alternative universes.

The MetaBirkins case scratches the surface of the abundant number of legal issues facing major brands who are seeking to protect their IP from infringements in these emerging technology ecosystems. Fashion brands must remain proactive in registering their trademarks, registering design patents, and continuously protecting other aspects of their IP portfolio in such a way that they have full latitude to go after anyone who infringes on their products. 

For many fashion brands, their legal battles are no longer limited to going after the manufacturers of counterfeit goods, whether the product is sold on eBay, DHGate, or elsewhere. With the dawn of NFTs and new media, infringements like the ones evidenced in the MetaBirkins case are very likely to happen. Fashion brands must recognize that battling “dupe” product culture has reached new dimensions; if they’ve combatted counterfeit culture all these years, addressing it in new terrain like the metaverse should be straightforward.

Do you agree with this?
Do you disagree or have a completely different perspective?
We’d love to know

More

The Fashion Industry Treats Tech Like a Seasonal Trend

Ownership Has Fallen Out of Fashion Recap

Out With The New, In With The Old

The Future is Authenticated, Brands Risk Missing the Opportunity

Brands that AI forecast, fall. Brands that react, rise.

IP Law Applies to Physical and Digital Fashion Goods

Ownership has fallen out of fashion

AI forecasting is essential to fashion’s survival

THE

SECONDARY

MARKET

ISSUE #003

Ownership

has fallen out of

FASHION

The relationship between fashion and technology has always been a curious one. Early hesitations from high-end fashion brands about embracing online storefronts, the influential role of social media, and the rush to hop onto trending bandwagons like NFTs and the metaverse highlight the dynamics of their interaction. Yet, technology has also paved the way for market expansions, ushering in the era of direct-to-consumer (D2C) models and influencer-driven retail.

A rapidly evolving landscape is the secondary market. Changing consumer behaviors challenge traditional ownership ideals. Technology is swiftly introducing new authentication methods, from innovative material designs to more advanced techniques. Legacy platforms such as eBay are vying for dominance in this secondary market alongside newer disruptors like TheRealReal.

Brands grapple with their place in this secondary market. Some, like Patagonia, Levis, and DOEN, are reclaiming, authenticating, and reselling products. Others destroy surplus inventory to artificially create scarcity and elevate value. Strategies are emerging that leverage the secondary market’s appeal to boost primary sales, as seen with Nike and Supreme. Legal battles ensue over intellectual property rights, such as the StockX vs. Nike case. Innovative startups, like One of None, are reimagining ownership concepts, while established ventures, like Rent-The-Runway, question the notion of ownership altogether. Not to mention, social media platforms are enabling individuals to bypass traditional avenues, building personal followings to directly sell secondary products.

JOIN US FOR ON_FASHION,
A DISCOURSE FILLED EVENT DEBATING THE FUTURE OF THE SECONDARY MARKET.

CASA CIPRIANI
SEPTEMBER 13TH
9AM-11AM

Inquire about attending:
memberships@ondiscourse.com

This evolving landscape demands fresh technological solutions to tackle emerging challenges and uncover new opportunities. We're confronted with both time-tested queries and novel contemplations:

  • How can products be accurately authenticated?
  • How can consumers ensure the authenticity of their purchases?
  • Should brands be entitled to receive royalties in secondary sales?
  • Is the concept of ownership still as revered?
  • If products are viewed as assets, shouldn't they be tradable like financial commodities?

Such inquiries present unique opportunities to harness or innovate technology, be it materials science, blockchain, generative AI, or advanced personalization.

In ON_Fashion, The Secondary Market Issue we will explore these trends from a multitude of angles, driven by articles from some of the world’s leading experts in fashion, tech and business. Over the course of the coming days and weeks we will publish provocations and new perspectives that will unlock new ways to think about this fast growing and hugely disruptive segment of the market.

On September 13, we also host ON_Fashion a discourse-driven event, during New York Fashion Week to debate these topics with a group of C-Suite leaders, investors and tech entrepreneurs.

Interested in attending? Inquire about membership here: memberships@ondiscourse.com

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The Fashion Industry Treats Tech Like a Seasonal Trend

Ownership Has Fallen Out of Fashion Recap

Out With The New, In With The Old

The Future is Authenticated, Brands Risk Missing the Opportunity

Brands that AI forecast, fall. Brands that react, rise.

IP Law Applies to Physical and Digital Fashion Goods

Ownership has fallen out of fashion

AI forecasting is essential to fashion’s survival

Individual Premier

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The

Fediverse

 doesn't give

Threads

a reason to exist

Toby Daniels
Co founder ON_Discourse

What justification does Threads, Meta’s by-the-numbers Twitter clone, have to exist beyond expanding the Facebook monolith? If you listen to the company, Threads will be a bold experiment in decentralized social networking… at some vague point in the future.

Meta has said that it plans to make Threads part of the fediverse, the web of independent social networks that run on a social networking protocol called ActivityPub.. The idea behind the fediverse is to let users seamlessly connect and migrate between different platforms. The closest example of such an interoperable ecosystem in operation today is email. It doesn’t matter where someone’s email address is hosted; an email sent from one provider to another arrives exactly the same.

Most fediverse projects are built around technology from the ground up as a core feature. Yet Threads has already launched as a centralized social network almost identical to Twitter, following Meta’s long-established playbook of cloning successful features from competitors when it can’t just buy them out entirely. This model has worked for Meta because its sheer scale perpetuates itself. Its platforms’ ubiquity allows Meta to saturate the market with cloned versions of competitors’ features before they have a chance to catch up.

But with Threads, Meta is going one step further and cloning a competitor wholesale. Twitter (now known as X, courtesy of a hasty and baffling rebrand) is in rapid decline due to technical mismanagement, fleeing advertisers, and the plummeting quality of its content. While that might have created an opportunity to snatch away Twitter users, Meta has yet to mount a convincing case that Threads has any purpose other than expanding its own reach.

Meta has yet

to mount a

convincing case that

Threads

has any

purpose

other than

expanding its

own reach.

It has yet to give users any reason to believe that Threads will improve on Twitter, which is irrevocably broken. It hasn’t even bothered to experiment with a new business model like subscriptions, which would make users the customer instead of the product. Instead, it’s more of the same.

Without a compelling reason Threads should exist in the first place, why not turn to buzzwords and obfuscation? Enter its promises to adopt the ActivityPub protocol.

Should we take seriously the idea that Meta, the historical inheritor of AOL’s walled garden model, will snap its fingers and suddenly embrace the ethos of decentralization and user and data migration? It takes a month just to delete a Facebook account. Moreover, it’s hard to believe users care much about decentralization at the scale Threads is operating at.

The largest of Threads’s fediverse competitors, Mastodon, has a niche audience of less than 14 million users—a figure Threads dwarfed in a few days of pushing signups through Instagram.

Most social media users aren’t interested in the arcana of federated services, and those that are probably aren’t big on the idea of it getting a big Facebook injection.

Even if Threads does implement the ActivityPub protocol, it’s less likely that the fediverse will impart new ideas on Meta than Meta will impose its self-serving ones on the fediverse. As Wired reported, ActivityPub isn’t plug-and-play—Meta will retain control over factors like how closely Threads users will be able to interact with other fediverse networks, how easy it will be to migrate their accounts and data to competing services, and what Threads content will be displayed across the fediverse.

With Threads potentially positioned to become the primary portal via which users access the federated social world, it could exert massive influence on how those rivals are forced to operate not to mention the ad networks which monetize them.

But why would it bother? Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp have already hit near-total saturation—a novel problem for a company whose value has historically been based on explosive growth—and there’s no reason for Meta to compete with itself at a time when it’s desperately trying to retain users.

Presumably, the overwhelming majority of Threads users already have accounts on other Meta services, which means Threads can also be understood as a way of luring users who have stopped posting on Facebook back into engaging with another arm of the Meta ecosystem. (This should also make advertisers wary of Threads, lest they be convinced they should spend even more on another Meta platform just to reach the same users.)

Meanwhile, not only is Threads very much not built around ActivityPub from the ground up, Meta has yet to set any timetable on which this integration will happen. Earlier this month, Adam Mosseri alluded to “a number of complications,” which made the time frame for federation indeterminate beyond not at launch.

Right now, the only purpose Threads serves is as a growing number for Meta to point to on a spreadsheet. Federating doesn’t change that.

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Do you disagree or have a completely different perspective?
We’d love to know

MORE
ON_Media

Why The Fediverse Deserves Your Notice, Even If You’re Not Using it
Threads: What a Waste of Time
It’s Game Over for Volunteer-Driven Social Media
Media Companies Shouldn’t Reject Generative AI
Disclosing the use of AI in reporting: It’s Futile
Against AI Art
The Fediverse doesn’t give Threads a reason to exist
Will AI Enhance or Destroy the Business of Media – Event Recap

Content has become mundane and unexceptional as a result of personalized recommendations on Netflix and Spotify. Is there anything we can do about it?

Ian Schafer
Award-winning global brand, marketing, advertising, and sports & entertainment entrepreneur and executive.

We Are Algorithm-ing
Ourselves Into a

MONOCULTURE

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I worked at Miramax Films. The company was successful because they perfected the art of mining for undiscovered gems, films like Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotapes—something weird enough to generate lots of buzz, but accessible enough to appeal to a sizable audience, allowing it to stay in theaters long enough to gross tens of millions of dollars on a shoestring budget. Miramax’s business model was part of a robust independent film industry wherein offbeat approaches to movie-making and going against the grain was profitable. Producing early movies from visionary directors like Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, and the Coen Brothers, who would later establish themselves as some of the all-time greats, were low-risk investments with the potential for a handsome reward. And so, all sorts of art was able to flourish.

Today’s media landscape doesn’t allow for this kind of creative innovation. Instead, platforms like Netflix and Spotify rely on personalization algorithms that deliver viewers content based on what they, and people like them, have already consumed. This technology favors big-budget movies and TV shows with superstars, franchises, and anything that has the potential to appeal to the largest audience possible. Whatever has the maximum chance of the maximum number of people pressing play is greenlit. Unconventional projects are less likely to get produced, in spite of their small budgets, because they don’t necessarily comport with what the algorithm suggests viewers want. So we get the same stories told over and over again in the most conventional way possible. Our strange and beautiful world, with its millions of peculiar and idiosyncratic artists and its billions of thoughtful and curious consumers, has become a monoculture. Everything looks the same. We seldom have the opportunity to discover pieces of culture that challenge how we understand the world and ourselves.

Today’s media landscape doesn’t allow for this kind of creative innovation.

The prevalence of streaming makes it feel like we have more choice than ever—there is a surfeit of content produced by Netflix, Disney, Apple, Amazon, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, and NBCUniversal exclusively for their streaming services, and it all runs together, slick, big budget, with familiar characters and tropes. Studios are also producing fewer movies for theatrical release, most of them big-budget affairs, which puts tremendous pressure on every single one of them to turn a huge profit. What gets greenlit has little to do with art or quality—it’s actuarial science. There isn’t the same amount of artistic risk-taking that there used to be, and so everything is mass-market.

There used to be mechanisms that allowed the biggest hits to support projects that fell outside of the mainstream. Back in the days of cable bundles, for example, the consumer paid one subscription fee to access an assortment of channels. Bundling mainstream content with the countercultural allowed channels like IFC and Adult Swim to exist. The streaming business model ripped it all apart, making it much more difficult for niche productions to get funded.

These days, when something new is able to break through, it tends to get exploited, not rewarded. An artist can make something new or different, and if it finds a big enough audience, it takes approximately one millisecond before it’s been imitated and reproduced into oblivion by megacorporations. SHEIN, the Chinese online fast-fashion behemoth, has become the biggest fashion retailer in the world precisely because the company is able to copy the latest trends and get it into their stores quicker than designers can design new things. What companies like SHEIN do is exploitation in every sense of the word: they exploit somebody else’s designs for their own economic gain, and they exploit the environment to produce their imitations as cheaply and quickly as possible.

Our monoculture hasn’t just made culture and pop culture less interesting; it’s become a central plot point within the biggest hits of our era. The story arcs of the Marvel and DC cinematic universes both have to do with the idea of a multiverse, not because it’s a compelling narrative device, but because the studios need a way to tie the Sony Spider-man movies into the Marvel universe that Disney built. It’s a commercial explanation for the vast web of IP that the studios have spun, not an artistic one. Writers, directors, and artists are forced to become entrepreneurs; economic factors shape the soul of their work as much, if not more, than creativity, experimentation, and personal expression.

Our monoculture hasn’t just made culture and pop culture less interesting; it’s become a central plot point within the biggest hits of our era.

Money has the tendency to ruin art, and this isn’t a new phenomenon. The internet’s impact on the way we consume media and buy products has simply amplified the worst tendencies of the media conglomerates that hold total authority over what we consume. They’ve optimized and algorithm-ed art into something featureless. The writers and actors currently striking aren’t worried about artificial intelligence taking their jobs for no reason; the type of media being produced is so uniform and soulless that it’s a legitimate concern.

This all sounds very dire. But not all hope is lost! There are weird independent movies being made, and some of them manage to achieve commercial success. Most recently, Everything Everywhere All At Once, the trippy action-adventure romp starring Michelle Yeoh, netted over $100 million, won seven Oscars, and has become, per IGN, the “most-awarded” film of all-time. It received a total of 158 accolades, and it deserved every single one of them. It is, nevertheless, very much a movie born from our modern era, a play on the notion of the multiverse, an inventive pastiche of the superhero movies that have taken over the movie industry over the last 15 years.

or
Would You Let Netflix
Read Your Mind?


The production companies around today that use the same business model as Miramax, small fish compared to Disney and Netflix, are still taking artistic risks and they are paying off. Blumhouse, the company behind some of this decade’s biggest horror hits like Get Out, Paranormal Activity, and M3GAN, regularly produces weird, badass, low-budget fare without big stars and multimillion budgets, and they are thriving. A24 is a company doing similar things in the world of independent films, and has given us Everything Everywhere All At Once, Midsommar, Uncut Gems, Moonlight, and Ex Machina. Both media operations deliver work that tells new stories in visually interesting ways, and their success proves that viewers are still hungry to consume new narratives that aren’t part of the monoculture.

Media exists to entertain us, comfort us, delight us, frighten us, evoke a spectrum of untapped emotions, and give us new experiences and ideas to talk about with our friends and loved ones. The monoculture that the algorithm has forged is eliminating the potential for discovery, surprise, and expansion of our understanding of the world. There isn’t much an individual can do to change the system; we have to challenge ourselves to break free from the endless optimization and remember that there are still new experiences to be found if you look hard enough.

Do you agree with this?
Do you disagree or have a completely different perspective?
We’d love to know

More

Good Artists Copy Great AIs Steal Recap

We Are Algorithm-ing Ourselves Into a Monoculture

Would You Let Netflix Read Your Mind?

Good Artists Copy, Great AIs Steal

How Artists Turn AI Into Gold

A Brush with AI: The Copyright Fight For Digital Creativity

Good Artists Copy,
Great AIs Steal

Our August 9 event set the stage for a lively, engaging debate over a private dinner and drinks in the Hamptons with Premier Members and specially invited guests in the entertainment, media, and tech industries. 

The discussion centered around creativity, ownership, distribution, and how technology, especially AI, is forcing key players to adapt in a rapidly changing industry. The discourse was more animated and led to productive disagreement on the merits and limitations of AI concerning the creativity of the human mind. We cannot thank the people who attended and contributed to the conversation enough. 

Central to our mission is to bring diverse perspectives to these conversations, and the evening didn’t disappoint. We heard perspectives from legendary artists, filmmakers, creatives, entrepreneurs, media and entertainment executives, CEOs, CMOs, and investors. The caliber of their contributions was a key reason why this particular event led to such a fantastic discussion.

We are sharing a few key takeaways here. We’d love to hear from you if you’d like to discuss any of them further and contribute a perspective to this editorial platform. As always, the pull-quotes are not and will never be attributed.

Provocations Used

Good artists copy, great AIs steal

  • Can true creativity be quantified by skill alone or is innovative thinking the real essence? 
  • Can true creativity exist without emotions and personal experiences, or is that what differentiates us from AI? 
  • Are we on the brink of an evolution in art and creativity, much like the industrial revolution, and do real creatives lead or resist such changes? 
  • How does one distinguish between a genuine creative thought and an AI-generated one?
  • What is the difference between the smartest person in the world and they can create something and AI?

Do Creatives Even Know What Creativity Is?

  • Why when a human copies, it’s not stealing, but when AI does the same process it is stealing?
  • In a world where AI mirrors human creativity, can we still claim originality as uniquely ours?
  • Should financial or artistic credit be reserved solely for human-created content, even if AI produces equally compelling work?

Would you let Netflix read your mind?

  • As AI replicates art, are we approaching a paradigm shift where creativity is democratized beyond human boundaries?
  • How might AI-driven entertainment redefine our relationship with anticipatory content?
  • As AI tailors entertainment to our desires, does it matter if we ever again experience the joy of stumbling upon unexpected gems if people are entertained? 
  • If every viewer gets a unique version of a show or series, where does that leave the collective experience of fandom?

Discourse Rating

  • Less Agreeable — The group was mixed on the idea that AI could outperform the human mind regarding creativity. This led to some great back-and-forth debate on the limitations of what AI could do to produce great entertainment. This is the kind of discourse we're hoping to achieve, and it was a step further in that direction. 

Recap

“Artificiality will be extremely attractive.”

In opposition to the AI-averse, some fully embraced the idea that AI could replace entire entertainment genres. One guest said: “We need to listen to the audience and their preferences. Artificiality will be extremely attractive. We have to remember that audiences are participants and interpreters. They have a preference, and they will drive decisions." Another guest was excited by the idea of allowing a platform like Netflix to program itself based on their and their partner’s personal preferences and totally willing to provide data to optimize that experience.

One side conversation remarked on how art and entertainment created in such an alluring and personalized way could lead to terrible outcomes for society. Cheap technologies provide cheap endorphin/dopamine hits, leading to addiction, disconnection from society, and even further isolation and polarization.

— Provocation – Would you let Netflix read your mind?

Or…

“We are consuming and cannibalizing our culture so fast.”

Some in the middle of being both curious of what AI could do to enhance art and entertainment, but at the same time worried about how it could lead to a monoculture remarked that “we are consuming and cannibalizing our culture so fast."

In America, the problem is with adults and their culture and where they think we are going. The one glimmer of hope in all this is around the economy and distribution of ideas. It’s about valuing culture and community. There’s going to be floodgates opening. The question is: will we really be the culture we say we are or will it be invented and adapted? Young people’s rebellion against the dominant culture is what creates “real” culture.

The idea that youth culture could provide a counter to the potential blandness and repetitive nature of AI was thought to be an optimistic view of how humans can overcome the inevitable march of AIs dominance in popular culture.

— Provocation – Good Artists Copy, Great AIs Steal

Or…

“The internet made live events more valuable, and AI will make that even more so.”

Another guest remarked on how live events became more in demand in response to the predictability of mass-market culture and the endless content the internet provides. People crave the spontaneity of live events, such as festivals, concerts, and sporting events. The guest predicted that if AI becomes a huge part of our lives, it will only serve to make live and in-person entertainment even more attractive, and more valued because it cannot be generated by a machine, making it rare and special.

— Provocation – AI will destroy talent OR talent is overrated

Finally…

“Why does AI have to satisfy everything? It’s not an either/or, it’s an ‘and’”

Pushback on those who were AI-averse was that AI wasn’t the answer to everything and shouldn’t be viewed as a tool that will be useful in all cases, or that it should take the place of certain tasks completely but rather be complementary. The hype cycle for AI has created an overwhelming feeling that this will disrupt our lives completely, but the reality may be that it’s an assistant we can lean on to help us, rather than replace us. One participant remarked: “Aren’t we just overwhelmed by the pace of change?"

— Provocation – Do Creatives Even Know What Creativity Is?

Do you agree with this?
Do you disagree or have a completely different perspective?
We’d love to know

More

Good Artists Copy Great AIs Steal Recap

We Are Algorithm-ing Ourselves Into a Monoculture

Would You Let Netflix Read Your Mind?

Good Artists Copy, Great AIs Steal

How Artists Turn AI Into Gold

A Brush with AI: The Copyright Fight For Digital Creativity

Different

Perspectives,

Together.

ON_Discourse is a membership based community of C-suite leaders, investors, and innovators focused on driving business transformation through the discipline of discourse.

Learn More

GROUP CHAT

What if Jack Dorsey is right?

The case for and against abolishing IP law

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

What if Jack Dorsey is right?

Dorsey’s provocation invites an exploration on the future of IP law. If we don't rethink the purpose of intellectual property, we aren't protecting creativity anymore. We’re protecting a future that no longer exists.

SUBSCRIBE

FEATURE

Duolingo is Solving Small in AI Transformation

Gen Z isn’t coming for the internet. They’re rebuilding it from scratch. And most of us haven’t noticed.

Toby Daniels

04•25•25

Welcome to the Community

Interested in learning how to join?

PERSPECTIVE

AI Needs a Feedback Layer

The next big AI acronym might be: RLHF

Sam Broe

04•25•25

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

What is the rush?

The most interesting builders in our network aren’t just moving fast. They’re using speed to reshape intention. To prototype purpose. To rediscover why they’re building in the first place

SUBSCRIBE

PODCAST

Toby and Dan Argue About Strategy

Episode #012

Toby and Dan turn a weekly meeting into an impromptu podcast recording about the future of digital strategy and why notifications suck.

LISTEN

FEATURE

The Internet is Being Rebuilt

Gen Z isn’t coming for the internet. They’re rebuilding it from scratch. And most of us haven’t noticed.

Toby Daniels

04•21•25

SUBSCRIBE

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

AI isn’t revolutionary to Gen Z.

We invited two teenagers into a group chat. No titles. No decks. No “vision.” Just two high schoolers who are already using AI tools the way we once used FTP clients and WordPress installs. They’re building with no reverence whatsoever.

PODCAST

Vibecoding with Gen Z

Episode #011

Toby interviews a couple of teenagers who are vibecoding their way through the modern internet. This conversation reveals an alternative perspective on the AI revolution, from a generation that never knew a world without the web.

LISTEN

Welcome to the Community

Interested in learning how to join?

SUBSCRIBE

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

AI will commoditize democratization

In the last two years, we’ve hosted hundreds of events about AI and nearly every one is centered on the idea that AI will democratize creativity, coding, knowledge, etc. But is it true? And what does it really mean?

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

The Hardest Part Isn’t Building AI — It’s Selling It

Our members are at the cutting edge of AI. Their prospective clients see the promise of AI - they see the same headlines as everyone else - but they don’t yet know how to use it, where it fits, or what it’s worth. The friction is not resistance. It’s uncertainty.

SUBSCRIBE

Welcome to the Community

Interested in learning how to join?

HOT TAKE

The Gartner Hype Cycle is Over

For decades it has been the go-to cliché in tech. Not only does this lead to boring, useless perspectives, but it also relies on an outdated research methodology that makes no sense.

Toby Daniels

03•17•25

FEATURE

Linguistic Illusionists

AI doesn't understand a damn thing

Max Weidemann

03•13•25

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

It’s Time to Build

Many of our members tell us that this moment feels like the 90’s all over again. Anything is possible because anyone can make anything. All you need is a voice and some vibes.

SUBSCRIBE

POWERED BY DECODER • EDITED BY CHMIEL

Discourse in the News

Our top agent identified three provocations for the week of March 3, 2025

1. Consumer Agents are Coming!

Amazon and T-Mobile (Telekom) made two separate announcements about AI-powered personal assistants in the upgraded Alexa+ and the new so-called AI-Phone.

These agents won’t just respond to consumer prompts; they will autonomously act and manage daily tasks without a command.

READ THESE FIRST

Telekom, Perplexity debut “AI Phone” The Rundown AI, Rowan Cheung

Alexa+ tracks your WHOLE life Superhuman AI, Zain & team

YOU TELL US

Are agentic devices worth the privacy compromise?

Is this just marketing?

2. Is GPT4.5 a Big Emotional Whiff?

GPT4.5 was released with improved emotional intelligence, astronomical pricing and marginal improvements. Many reviewers were unimpressed.

READ THESE FIRST

OpenAI’s GPT4.5 is here The Rundown AI, Rowan Cheung

GPT4.5 is confusing Ben’s Bites Newsletter

YOU TELL US

Is better emotional intelligence worth 30x higher usage fees?

Are new model releases boring now?

3. Is Inference Time Deeper Thinking?

New “deep research” models spend extra “thinking time” to break down and process prompts that rival human thought. What does this updated UI really mean?

READ THIS FIRST

Think Before Your Next Move: A Celebration of Inference Time Compute and AI Nate’s Substack

YOU TELL US

Does watching a model break down and “think” through a prompt enhance your research?

Is this a gimmick?

PERSPECTIVE

Solve Small and Think Like a Founder

AI transformation rarely happens in a single leap. Instead, it evolves through a series of incremental, often messy, small-scale shifts.

Toby Daniels

03•04•25

FEATURE

The Sledgehammer of Change

There can be a lot of light in and at the end of a transformation tunnel.

The Meaning of Photoshop

The Digital, Invisible, and Ruthless Device of Destruction

Chris Perry

03•03•25

ON_DISCOURSE SUMMIT

Round One of Summit Speakers

No one comes to an ON_Discourse event to hear our team speak. They want to know what the real experts are doing.

Don't Listen to Us, Listen to Them

Toby Daniels

02•26•25

Dan Gardner

Why small, tactical shifts lead to big impact

Katherine von Jan

The rise of Agentic Managers

Don McGuire

How a global marketing team is integrating AI

Mark Howard

The AI guardrails every business needs

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

Agents are more like staff than software.

One of our members started to market her AI agent as a person to hire rather than a piece of software to buy. This is either a meaningless semantic distinction or a new business model. We dig into it here.

SUBSCRIBE

FEATURE

The AI Perfection Paradox

As AI makes perfect self-presentation available to everyone, the value of that perfection plummets.

Henrik Werdelin

02•28•25

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

AI is bigger than efficiency.

For over a decade, the unicorn was the point of entrepreneurism. That made sense in an era of platforms. The emergence of AI, specifically agents and generative models, has created an opportunity that might change not only the game but also the mascot. Enter the donkeycorn, the antidote to hyperbolic entrepreneurship.

SUBSCRIBE

PODCAST

Henrik Werdelin Talks About Donkeycorns

Episode #008

Dan and Chmiel invite Henrik Werdelin, co-founder of Barkbox and PreHype, to talk about how unicorns are old news and how donkeycorns are the future. You’ll hear about how Agentic AI can prompt wannabe entrepreneurs into actual founders. This is a small idea that can transform the economy.

LISTEN

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

Solve Small

AI is too big to “do.” It needs to be broken down into small functions, frameworks, and features that can solve real business problems. In other words: solve small.

SUBSCRIBE

PODCAST

The Gang Makes an Announcement

Episode #007

Toby, Dan, and Chmiel officially announce The ON_Discourse Summit - Solve Small: AI Transformation for the C-Suite.

LISTEN

Welcome to the Community

Interested in learning how to join?

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

The discourse about AI transformation is too big, vague, and theoretical.

We’re working on a new project. It is built on this idea of small thinking and AI transformation. Over the next 6 weeks, we will be provoking and discoursing about the real, actionable ideas that industry leaders are actually doing that will realize the epic future we all keep describing.

SUBSCRIBE

PODCAST

Dan Writes a LinkedIn Post

Episode #006

Dan returns to the podcast to talk about the off-the-record conversations he had at Davos. Toby and Chmiel use the LinkedIn post he wrote about his trip to scrutinize the level of discourse about AI transformation. The key takeaway: no one knows what happens next.

LISTEN

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

Why are you acting like this will ever make sense?

You are not living in conventional times. You are living on the fault line of a new technological epoch where the tectonic plates of platforms, workforces, data, and content are all fracturing underneath our feet. Get used to earthquakes.

SUBSCRIBE

Welcome to the Community

Interested in learning how to join?

PODCAST

The Management Track

Episode #005

Toby and Chmiel reflect on the future of managers. They ponder the value of the role and whether AI can enhance or replace it. Perspectives from ON_Discourse member Katherine von Jan, founder of tough.day, reveal a new set of opportunities to help employees and organizations thrive in the AI era.

LISTEN

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

Managers are not just obsolete; they are harming your organization.

Managers have always been the low-hanging fruit of office culture. Easy to pick on, complain about, and parody. Now, thanks to AI, they are about to get permanently plucked.

SUBSCRIBE

PODCAST

Boardy

Episode #004

Toby, Dan, and Chmiel argue about Boardy, an AI-bot that crawls LinkedIn, calls you on the phone, asks you personal and probing questions, listens and interprets your answers, and then makes contextual introductions to similar strangers from different networks. Is this what we are talking about when we talk about the future of AI?

LISTEN

CES 2025

What Happens in Vegas... Gets Recapped

We hosted floor tours about the Agentic Era. We recorded the discourse with over 120 executives. We asked Elon Musk why the Internet Sucks. If you want to know what happened at CES, we got you covered.

Download the Report

We partnered with Stagwell this year to summarize the discourse from our tours

Listen to the Pod

Toby and Chmiel talk about the key moments that resonated during the week

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Chmiel says goodbye to Vegas, to gadgets, and hello to the agentic web

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

AI is starting to get useful

This week’s dispatch covers the trends we noticed in our research, the exhibitions we are focusing on, and the perspectives we are hearing from the industry leaders who we are guiding through the CES floor.

SUBSCRIBE

CES 2025

Live Q&A with Elon Musk

January 8, 10:30pm ET, 7:30pm PT • @Live

We're excited to announce that ON_Discourse is participating in a live Q&A with Elon Musk and Stagwell Chairman and CEO, Mark Penn during CES 2025.

During the conversation, our co-founders Toby Daniels and Dan Gardner will have an opportunity to ask Elon a question about the state of the internet and how Elon thinks we can fix it.

JOIN US LIVE

CES 2025

Floor Tours

Agents are the quiet revolution reshaping our digital lives. Join us and Stagwell at CES on the Agentic Era Tour and explore how AI agents are not just tools but transformative companions in healthcare, work, and the home.

SIGN UP

FEATURE

Reflections Eternal

Toby provokes himself about 2024

The Year in Discourse

Being Comfortable with Uncertainty

Toby Daniels

12•20•24

SPECIAL ISSUE

AI & eCommerce

What can agents do for your business?

How can you increase revenue 5X without building a new tech stack? We report back from an AI expert on the simple path to growth.

DOWNLOAD

Dan Gardner

12•11•24

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

Future-Proofing the web is making it worse

We took optimization too far. We turned the magic of the early internet into an endless spreadsheet. An analysis of how the concept of future-proofing web design has slowly degraded the wonder and experience of the internet. Can it be fixed?

SUBSCRIBE

PERSPECTIVE

How to evaluate the effectiveness of AI investment

Do what you love and let AI do the rest

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

Weekly Provocation: Media is disrupting AI, too

A dispatch from a NYC conference about AI and the media reveals a complicated relationship between media and AI. The media industry is more than interested; they are frustrated by the limitations of AI. Specifically, the loading time of AI summaries is a big problem.

SUBSCRIBE

Welcome to the Community

Interested in learning how to join?

PODCAST

The Internet Sucks

Episode #002

Toby and Dan talk about their trip to Lisbon for Web Summit, legal protections for agents, and why the internet sucks (and how it could be better).

LISTEN

IN THE TRADES

Beware of Hype

What if that sudden surge of attention and sales comes is not the thing you were looking for all along? One of our founding members bursts the hype bubble in Design Week UK.

READ IT HERE

FEATURE RECAP

2nd Annual EOY Provocations Zoom

Predictions are boring. What if we prepared for 2025 with provocations instead? For the second year in a row, we asked our members to provoke the new year with a series of questions, statements, and feelings.

Twelve Provocations About 2025

Matt Chmiel

11•29•24

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

AI Compliance will be codified by 2026. Are you ready for it?

Who is liable when an AI agent says the wrong thing? The platform that hosts it, the brand that uses it, the developer that programmed it, or the model that trained it? While the black box of AI makes for good legal discourse, you should pay attention if you are developing an agent.

SUBSCRIBE

RECAP

AI and the Law

Are agents protected under Section 230? What is the deal with the Colorado AI Act?

Matt Chmiel

11•15•24

RECAP

Agents won’t work in eCommerce, yet.

This expert thinks the hottest thing in eCommerce is better site search.

Matt Chmiel

11•08•24

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

The emotional web is a gold mine.

An emotional web can help us understand ourselves better; understand how we can change our habits, and do it without judgment and with empathy. What if we were able to do this without pharmacology? This is the opportunity that lies ahead.

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PODCAST

The Home is an Interface

 Introducing the ON_Discourse Podcast

Our team preps for an upcoming summit about the future of the connected home. Can tech bring families together or will smart-toasters rule the home?

LISTEN

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

Nothing can stop AI-generated media.

We are going from a mass-media content supply chain to a personalized one. Tomorrow, 90% of what we consume will be personalized, generated, and unique to each individual. You may not want it. You may not like it. You may think it will start a civil war. The one thing you won’t be able to do is stop it.

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RECAP

Inevitable AI?

A room full of executives argues against an unstoppable AI invasion.

Matt Chmiel

10•10•24

FEATURE

Does AI Get Brands?

Can an LLM truly understand and then replicate the values that made good brands great?

James Cooper

FEATURE

Your Dumb House

When will all of our connected devices start making sense? A new era of connectivity is coming.

Overheard at ON_Discourse

MEMBER EXPERIENCE

Is Behavior the New Prompt?

October 10, 9 – 11am • Gemma NYC

We’re bringing together business leaders and AI experts to debate the question in the context of entertainment and marketing.

LEARN MORE

RECAP

SaaS is a Trick

You spend a lot of money to stay in what this founder called “data jail.” Can AI break you out of expensive SaaS contracts?

Matt Chmiel

10•03•24

NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY PROVOCATION

AI Is the Ultimate Manager

People are weird. They have feelings and those things are a mess. Despite this factory flaw, we have collectively decided that the best way to turn emotional beings into productive workers is to manage them… with other people. What does the future org-chart look like if AI replaces conventional management tasks?

SUBSCRIBE

RECAP

Move Fast and Break Synthetic Sh*t

How AI is integrating into the workplace. The good, the bad, and everything in between.

Matt Chmiel

09•27•24

Welcome to the Community

Interested in learning how to join?

RECAP

Holy F*ing Sh*t

A member tells us what it felt like to build a functional CRM prototype in 3 hours. And Donkeycorns.

Matt Chmiel

09•19•24

FEATURE | INNOVATION IN AI

The Simulation Era

Design thinking is going to be replaced with AI-generated simulation technology. What does that look like? We wrote a multi-part series about it.

PART 1

An Ancient Strategy

Peter Pawlick

08•30•24

PART 2

The AI Spring

PART 3

Virtual
Prototyping

PART 4

Focus Areas
and Tools

PART 5

How to Get
Started

NEWSLETTER

Who Really Won the Olympics?

We covered this in a recent newsletter. No brands seemingly won the games, and gold medals didn’t have the same luster as memes.

WHAT IF?

MEMBER RESPONSE

Culture Won in Paris

Hip Hop and American culture dominated the games. They were the big winners. Read it here.

Carlos Mare

09•10•24

MEMBER EXPERIENCE

Blindspots

September 10, 9 – 11am • The Standard NYC

The pace of change is accelerating, so where are the blindspots that make it dangerous to navigate?

LEARN MORE

Welcome to the Community

Interested in learning how to join?

MEMBER EXPERIENCE

Weekly Group Chats

Everything you can expect from an ON_Discourse event, only smaller. Every Thursday 12-1EST

SEE MORE EVENTS

SPECIAL REPORT

The Internet 2025 Download

The future Internet is being written, and it’s going to be weird, wild and most likely, even more batshit crazy than its predecessor. If you want to understand how to successfully ride the next wave, join us for a breakdown of everything we have learned, and the incredible perspectives shared by over one hundred leading experts in tech and business.

GET THE DOWNLOAD

LATEST FROM OUR NEWSLETTER

Weekly Provocation: Virality Defeated Marketing in Paris.

Snoop defeated the brands. His mystifying behavior generated its own gravitational force. NBC deserves credit for setting him free on their platform, where he simultaneously commentated on badminton, dressage, danced at gymnastics, and randomly appeared throughout the event.

We have thousands of subscribers. Join Them

FROM A RECENT GROUP CHAT

What Are We Getting Wrong About AI?

Our members are bullish on the value of Gen AI.

Welcome to the Community

Interested in learning how to join?

Toby Daniels
Co-Founder,
ON_Discourse

Would YOU Let

Netflix

Read

Your Mind?

Search and discovery will be replaced by AI, which will anticipate your needs and provide hyper-personalized entertainment experiences.

Humans have a thirst for convenience and personalization. We want quick, tailored content across many platforms, such as streaming music, TV, and film. We hate choice and being made to think. In the future, our entertainment preferences will not just be catered to but anticipated by AI, rendering search, discovery, and even the prompting of AI chatbots obsolete.

TL;DR:

  • The future of entertainment may be defined by Anticipation On-Demand Entertainment, where AI will anticipate and deliver personalized content based on consumer behavior and preferences.
  • AI's ability to process massive amounts of data in real time allows it to learn from and predict user behavior, taking personalization to new levels.
  • In this future, AI could automatically select music or shows aligning with the user's current mood, conversations, or global trends, without any manual intervention.
  • This highly tailored entertainment experience could transform the way we engage with platforms, making entertainment consumption more efficient and immersive.
  • Anticipatory AI might also influence content creation, with shows being created on-the-spot based on user's unmet needs and desires.
  • With continuous improvements in machine learning algorithms and UI design, the accuracy of such anticipation is expected to increase.
  • This could potentially lead to the unbundling of content, raising questions about the need for platforms like Netflix or Hulu.
and
The Future
Of Entertainment
or
We Are Algorithm-ing
Into a Monoculture

We call this Anticipation On-Demand Entertainment. Catchy right? ”

Humans have a thirst for convenience and personalization. We want quick, tailored content across many platforms, such as streaming music, TV, and film. We hate choice and being made to think. In the future, our entertainment preferences will not just be catered to but anticipated by AI, rendering search, discovery, and even the prompting of AI chatbots obsolete. 

AI’s ascent in entertainment personalization is not surprising, considering its inherent ability to process vast data volumes and generate real-time insights. AI uses sophisticated algorithms to analyze consumer behavior patterns, learn from them, and then make data-driven predictions about what a user might like next. We’ve seen the early stages in algorithms that suggest songs, films, or series based on the user’s past preferences. However, the concept of Anticipation On-Demand Entertainment takes it to a whole new level, and this will be just the beginning of something even more profoundly important.

Anticipation On-Demand imagines a future where AI knows what we want to consume before we even realize it ourselves. Imagine coming home and there’s a new show in your queue that doesn’t just align with your taste and preferences but has been generated according to your current mental state or even your subconscious.

The same can be applied to music. Based on your historical listening patterns, the AI might anticipate that you need a lively playlist to kickstart your Monday morning or soothing instrumental music to help you focus on work. A potential scenario is your AI seamlessly changing the music in the background as you transition from a morning jog to a work-from-home setup, catering to your fluctuating moods and activities without requiring manual intervention.

This level of automated personalization will change our engagement with entertainment platforms, making the experience more immersive and effortless. Users no longer have to spend time searching or discovering new content; instead, the AI does it for them. The user experience becomes more streamlined, and entertainment consumption becomes more efficient. The advantage is twofold; while consumers receive a hyper-personalized experience, entertainment providers can increase customer satisfaction and engagement.

But why will we even need these providers? Could this result in another unbundling of content as the need for Netflix or Hulu becomes obsolete? 

Moreover, with the anticipated improvements in machine learning algorithms and user interface design, the accuracy and timeliness of such anticipation will only increase. The AI will continuously learn from our changing preferences, making real-time adjustments to deliver content that aligns with our current mood, recent conversations, or global trends.

We need to think beyond curation, though, Anticipatory AI will also work its way into the creation process. Your shows will be created for you, on demand and in real time. The story plays out according to your unmet needs and desires. The next scene you watch hasn’t even been created yet.

What does this mean for format and length? What is an episode or a series even in this new reality? Why would a show need to end?  

The possibilities offered by Anticipation On-Demand Entertainment are exciting. AI, with its ability to analyze, learn, and predict, can bring unprecedented personalization to our entertainment experiences. It can transform 'on-demand' from simply 'what we want' to 'what we want before we know we want it.' It is the dawn of a new era where AI doesn’t just respond to our demands but anticipates them, making our digital experiences smoother, more efficient, and truly personalized.

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Discourse

TL;DR: takeaways:

  • AI's evolution may lead to Anticipation On-Demand Entertainment, where your preferences are predicted and met even before you realize them.
  • This advanced level of personalization could redefine our interaction with entertainment platforms, making the user experience more immersive and effortless.
  • Anticipatory AI could also influence content creation, leading to shows tailored to the viewer's current mood, desires, or subconscious thoughts.
  • As machine learning algorithms and UI design continue to improve, anticipatory AI's precision and relevance will increase.
  • This evolution might lead to the unbundling of content, questioning the need for existing entertainment platforms like Netflix or Hulu.

OR;

  • While Anticipation On-Demand Entertainment seems revolutionary, it raises serious concerns about privacy, as AI would need to access extensive personal data to make accurate predictions.
  • Over reliance on AI might eliminate the joy of discovery, reducing the opportunity for users to explore diverse content beyond their regular preferences.
  • The idea of AI creating shows in real-time raises questions about the quality and creativity of such content compared to human-produced content.
  • Not all users may appreciate such a high level of personalization, as it could make their experiences feel manipulated or artificial.
  • The argument assumes continuous improvements in AI algorithms and UI designs. However, technological progress might face obstacles, slowing the pace of such evolution.
  • The possibility of unbundling content also brings up issues related to copyright laws and how artists would be compensated for their work.

Do you agree with this?
Do you disagree or have a completely different perspective?
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