Happy Friday, Future Party. Getting tickets online to see IMAX screenings of in-demand blockbusters has become a nearly impossible task. So, people are resorting to going to theaters in person to score tickets, sometimes showing up at midnight the day they go on sale. That’s right, load times are turning into line times. So, if you’re literally in line to get tickets to Dune: Part 3, stay in line!

DAILY TOP TRENDS

YouTube Backs Up The Brinks Truck To Keep Creators From Netflix

Battle royale // Image by Kait Cunniff with DALL-E

YouTube is reportedly offering incentives to top creators not to double-dip their content on Netflix.

Why It Hits: YouTube is finally acknowledging that Netflix is encroaching on its core business — being the home of top creators. Of course, Netflix has started poaching creators as YouTube has become the TV-viewership leader and now competes with film and TV streamers for sports and live-event broadcast rights. The real streaming wars are now between the two biggest juggernauts in media.

Behind The Scenes: YouTube is using both the carrot and the stick to keep content creators on its platform.

  • According to Bloomberg, YouTube is now offering deals worth millions of dollars to creators who don’t post their content on Netflix. 

  • Those incentives include direct cash payments and a share of revenue from major brand deals.

  • The company is reportedly close to inking deals with several top creators.

  • Additionally, it’s penalizing creators who double-dip by not including them in marketing campaigns or official events and not sharing brand-campaign revenue.

Payout: The tit-for-tat battle between YouTube and Netflix is one for engagement and advertisers. Creators are now posting on Netflix to get some sweet licensing money and reach a new audience. YouTube says that cross-posting ultimately hurts viewership on its platform. It also disincentivizes advertisers from seeing YouTube as the primary place to reach Gen Z and Gen Alpha eyeballs.

But by getting so involved with top creators who are flirting with Netflix, YouTube could be showing too much favoritism to a certain level of creator… potentially upsetting the platform’s larger community. How long can YouTube bill itself as just an online distribution platform?

Next Negotiation: It may be getting back to a world where YouTube launches a premium studio division. But instead of being for film and TV, it’ll be for top creators.

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Anything AI Unleashes Cartoon Colleagues

Courtesy of Anything AI

Vibe-coding startup Anything AI, founded by two former Google product leads, is rolling out a new tool that allows businesses and their employees to build AI agents that act as role-designated colleagues.

The Big Picture: AI agents are popping up in nearly every workplace. A McKinsey report last year found that 62% of businesses are experimenting with them, especially as they look to optimize their operations (read: cut down on employee headcount). It’s no wonder the AI agent market is expected to jump from $10.9 billion to $182.9 billion by 2033.

Between The Cubicles: Anything AI, which already has a $100 million valuation, is moving from generating apps to generating assistants, per Fast Company.

  • Its new product, Skydive, lets users create unique AI “teammates” from a custom prompt or by choosing from “four agent templates.”

  • These AI teammates are then added to Slack, given emails and phone numbers, and set up with web accounts. They can, of course, work around the clock.

  • These agents can do things like draft emails, manage the office, take lunch orders, brainstorm ideas, run engineering operations, or search for bugs in code.

  • Here’s the funny part: Anything AI has given these teammates “colorful, animated faces that almost resemble The Muppets. They don’t have mouths or noses — just eyes.” But they do have human names.

Clock Out: Anything AI already has 150 agents working internally at the company. While this has allegedly upped productivity and made it possible to automate several core functions, it hasn’t been without issues. Co-founder Dhruv Amin said the agents can be “a little bit overeager to please,” sending things to clients before they’re ready. So, they still take some management.

With these teammates essentially replacing entry-level jobs, it’s no wonder that young people are anxious about their job prospects. The bar is officially rising for human employment.

The Future: Expect every employee to become a quasi-manager, creating AI agents they can delegate work to.

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DEEP DIVES

Looking back at your first job, do you think the same kind of entry-level opportunity will exist for future generations?

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72.1% of you voted Overstimulated — there’s too much in yesterday’s poll: How do you feel about the amount of video content on social media?

“I miss the days when Instagram was just posting a picture.”

“Too many clips. Too much to possibly digest.”

“Everyone is trying to be a content creator, and most of it is too over the top. Add to that AI videos, and it’s just overwhelming. Admittedly, the exception for me is AI cat videos — I do enjoy them.”

“I love that there’s plenty of video content online. My only issue is that too much of it is just crap. There’s not enough worthwhile content… and definitely way too many clickbaiters. With that said, there’s still plenty of good stuff out there, but you usually have to be good at searching for it, as well as having a well-trained algorithm.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join Poll Of The Day, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

QUICK HITS

→ Technology

🤖 Anthropic could go public at a higher valuation than SpaceX, making it the biggest IPO ever.

💰 Stripe is acquiring AI startup OpenRouter for $7.5 billion to boost its ability to give AI agents purchasing power.

📰 Google will allow people to mark publishers as “favorite sources” across Search, Discover, and Google News.

→ Fashion / E-commerce

👕 Supreme’s chief creative officer, Erin Magee, is stepping down after 22 years.

🎥 Gap has hired former Walmart exec Justin Breton to help drive its original content strategy.

📞 Justin Bieber is looking to make a SKYLRK phone.

→ Creator Economy

🤳 Divine, the unofficial reboot to Vine, is now open to the public.

📱 Meta debuted a new vibe-coding mini-game app called Pocket.

👀 Two US Senators would like ByteDance to explain why it went ahead with a test that removed algorithmic safeguards for 10% of its users.

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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.

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