A lot of the actual creators do it for free. Like your comment and mine right here. But often, the one providing the infrastructure on which they do it is maki

A lot of the actual creators do it for free. Like your comment and mine right here. But often, the one providing the infrastructure on which they do it is making money via some mechanism. That's also part of the "grand bargain". You make your YouTube video or your TikTok or your Facebook comment or your Wordpress page. The company provides the hosting, in exchange for ads shown to the people who see your content. (That's not exactly true of our comments here on HN, and I admit I don't entirely understand that. It seems to be a combination of an inexpensive-to-provide service and a general goodwill-generator, along with a medium for some content they want distributed.) I think that comprises a very significant majority of creators: somebody somewhere is subsidizing it, even if there's an extra step involved. Though yeah, the creators themselves are probably getting demoralized, too. They want to feel their creative juices flowing and to experience some kind of connection with other people in sharing it. AI dilutes the former and sucks up the latter.