Perplexity is running creator campaigns of more than 100 people at a time on budgets in the millions, and judging them on conversions instead of impressions, according to Krystal Scanlon and Seb Joseph at Digiday. The lead on those campaigns also has to check the builds creators make with Perplexity Computer, confirming each one is original and really shows the product working, which puts the weight on demonstration rather than endorsement. Anthropic and OpenAI are buying into the same channel, with Anthropic hiring Lexie Barnhorn from Notion in March and OpenAI acquiring the creator media company TBPN. The catch for all three is that plenty of creators see AI as a threat to their own work, and OpenAI’s creator trip to New York this summer drew a backlash on exactly that.
