Patreon CEO: AI Companies Must Pay Creators for Their Work

The founder of a platform supporting hundreds of thousands of creators just drew a line in the sand about AI training practices.

Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon, told audiences at SXSW this week that AI companies calling their use of creator content "fair use" is a "bogus" argument. His reasoning cuts straight to the heart of a growing controversy in the creative world.

Conte pointed out a glaring contradiction. AI companies claim it's legal to use creator work as training data for free, yet they're signing multimillion-dollar deals with Disney, Condé Nast, Vox, and Warner Music for the exact same purpose.

"If it's legal to just use it, why pay?" Conte asked. "Why pay them and not creators, not the millions of illustrators and musicians and writers whose work has been consumed by these models?"

The Patreon founder made clear he's not anti-technology. Running a tech company himself, he understands that change is inevitable in the creator economy.

He compared the AI disruption to earlier shifts creators have weathered, from iTunes to streaming music, from horizontal to vertical video. Each transition broke existing models, but creators adapted and found new paths forward.

The Ripple Effect

Conte's message resonates beyond just payment issues. He's advocating for a future where technological progress and creative compensation coexist, not compete.

"When we plan for humanity's future, we should plan for society's artists, too," he said. "Societies that value and incentivize creativity are better for it."

His position reflects a growing movement among creator platforms and rights advocates pushing back against AI training practices. The conversation is shifting from whether AI will change creative work to how that change should happen fairly.

Conte ended his talk with confidence in human creativity's enduring value. While AI models predict outputs based on existing patterns, true artists push culture forward by standing on the shoulders of giants, not just replaying what already exists.

His call to action suggests a path where innovation doesn't require sacrificing the livelihoods of the people whose work fuels it, and creators continue thriving alongside the technology reshaping their industries.