Good morning. Yesterday, Elon Musk's startup xAI (not to be confused with X) made the raw code of its AI chatbot Grok open source…after Musk recently sued ChatGPT parent OpenAI for failing to do the same. Now, super-powered tech is more accessible for creators looking to put their own spin on AI…what could go wrong?

— Hannah Doyle & Nate Graber-Lipperman

Inside MrBeast’s Amazon Prime Game Show

Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson’s most expensive video, the now famous IRL Squid Game, cost $3.5 million to make and has 588 million views in two years. That’s going to be a drop in the bucket compared to Beast Games, the Amazon Prime Video game show Donaldson just announced.

What to expect: Over the course of 10+ episodes, Beast Games contestants will reportedly compete for $5 million, the largest cash prize in game show history (FYI: Netflix’s cash prize for last year’s Squid Game: The Challenge was $4.5 million). 

Donaldson told Colin and Samir that Beast Games, which premieres later this year, will be a hybrid of classic MrBeast YouTube videos and a classic TV game show.

“It’ll be six-plus hours of content while our normal [YouTube] videos are 20 minutes, so the character building and storytelling will be out of this world compared to normal videos,” Donaldson told Colin and Samir.

• FYI: Donaldson said he hired 90 new people to focus solely on the show (which means the MrBeast YouTube channel can continue with regular production as Beast Games gets made).

• Donaldson will promote Beast Games on his YouTube channel with an exclusive preview.

How MrBeast got here: Donaldson shopped the show idea to major streamers, ultimately partnering with Amazon (which gave him total creative control and the fewest financial constraints). Donaldson said every episode cost more to make than any of his YouTube videos.

Big picture: Donaldson’s Amazon deal (the price of which hasn’t been disclosed but is reportedly near $100 million, per Puck’s Matthew Belloni) is the first of its size for a creator. With that, he sees this opportunity as a make-or-break moment for creators in the streaming world.

“I recognize it could have a massive positive effect, and every streaming platform will throw deals left and right at creators,” Donaldson said. “Or negative effect, and people will go, ‘if Jimmy couldn’t make a hit show, what makes you think you can?’ That is one of my biggest fears.”

Watch the rest of the interview with MrBeast on Colin and Samir’s YouTube channel.

Skillshare Acquires Creator Tool Platform Superpeer

Skillshare, an online learning platform for creatives, acquired creator tools company Superpeer last week.

Popular Superpeer features (such as 1-on-1 calls and Live Sessions) will now allow Skillshare users to ask course creators direct questions and interact with peers interested in similar topics.

Why it matters: In a 2023 survey, creator commerce company Kajabi found that 70% of creators grossing six figures in revenue counted online courses as their best-selling digital products. Plus? The e-learning market is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2032, according to a 2022 report from Global Market Insights.

And Skillshare is a major player in the course market with over 12 million registered users.

• The platform offers 26,000 courses from 8,000 teachers.

• That list includes YouTube creators MKBHD, Lilly Singh, Ali Abdaal, and Nathaniel Drew.

But some creators have found more success through building their own cohort-based courses in-house, such as Abdaal’s Part-Time YouTuber Academy (PTYA).

• He told Colin and Samir last year that PTYA had roughly 180 members who paid $5,000 for a year-long package.

• As part of the cohort, Abdaal’s team gives members regular feedback on their videos and holds weekly office hours to answer specific questions.

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Spotify Creatives Share AI Safeguards from New Union Deal

Union staffers at pop culture publication and podcast network The Ringer struck a new contract with parent company Spotify on March 7.

A key part of that deal? Safeguards against generative AI, the union recently shared. The details:

• Spotify cannot recreate talent’s voices or likenesses without their permission.

• The company can, however, use AI to translate audio content into other languages.

• Staffers can decline to have their name credited on content that includes “substantial” AI contributions.

Perspective: “I love seeing [the] Ringer Union’s contract wins…all creators will need some protections against [management] using AI to take work from labor,” tech reporter David Lumb tweeted.

👀 Creator Moves

• Creators Agency is hiring a talent manager to build relationships with creators.

• Vezcos Media is hiring a video producer to create compelling and shareable content for YouTube.

• Spy Ninjas is hiring a director to write and edit episodes of its long-running scripted YouTube series. 

Looking to bring on new team members? You can post opportunities on our (free) job board here.

🔥 Press Worthy

• TikTok plans to fight recent legislation in court—a sale would be a last resort, according to Bloomberg.

• 100 Thieves president and COO John Robinson announces he’s stepping down after six years running the esports company.

• Presspublish.store makes our merch easy to find and hard to forget. Secure your own brandname.store for under $1 today.*

• Twitch is removing its Watch Parties feature, which allowed creators to stream Prime Video content.

• Rich Roll is launching a podcast network.

• LinkedIn plans to introduce games to its platform.

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