There’s a tempting business model floating around right now that goes something like this: use AI to rapidly generate large volumes of content, package it up with professional formatting, and sell access through a subscription or one-time payment. On the surface, it seems like a perfect arbitrage opportunity between the low cost of AI generation and what people might be willing to pay for “exclusive” information.
But this approach fundamentally misunderstands what makes content valuable and what people actually pay for.
The economics are straightforward enough. Modern language models can produce thousands of words on virtually any topic in seconds. You could theoretically generate comprehensive guides, industry reports, tutorials, or analysis pieces faster than any human writer. Add some basic editing, wrap it in a sleek website design, and you’ve got something that looks professional and substantive.The problem is that everyone else has access to these same tools. If you can generate a detailed guide on cryptocurrency investing or digital marketing strategies using AI, so can your potential customers. They might not package it as nicely, but the underlying information is equally accessible to them. You’re essentially asking people to pay for something they could create themselves with a few well-crafted prompts.
This gets at a deeper issue about what creates genuine value in information products. People don’t just pay for words on a page. They pay for expertise that comes from years of experience, for insights that emerge from doing rather than summarizing, for perspectives that challenge conventional thinking in meaningful ways. They pay for curation and judgment about what matters and what doesn’t. They pay for the credibility of someone who has skin in the game and a track record of being right about important questions.
AI-generated content can provide surface-level information and synthesize existing knowledge effectively. What it cannot do is offer hard-won wisdom, original research, proprietary data, or the kind of counterintuitive insights that only emerge from deep engagement with a field. It cannot tell you what worked and what failed in the trenches. It cannot share the subtle lessons that don’t make it into textbooks or blog posts.The most successful information businesses have always been built on genuine expertise and unique value. When people pay for investment research, they’re paying for analysts who spend their days talking to company executives and industry experts. When they subscribe to specialized newsletters, they’re paying for a specific person’s judgment and analytical framework. When they buy courses, they’re paying for structured learning from someone who has actually achieved what they’re teaching.
There’s also an ethical dimension worth considering. Creating content specifically designed to look more valuable than it actually is, with the primary goal of extracting payment rather than serving the customer, is a form of deception. It preys on information asymmetry and the hope that buyers won’t realize they’re purchasing something they could easily access or create themselves.The stronger approach is to use AI as a tool to enhance genuinely valuable content rather than as a replacement for it. If you have real expertise, you can use AI to help with research, to refine your writing, to generate examples, or to handle routine aspects of content creation while you focus on the insights that only you can provide. The AI becomes leverage for your authentic value rather than a mask for its absence.
The market has a way of correcting these misalignments over time. As more people become familiar with AI capabilities, they’ll become more sophisticated about recognizing AI-generated content and more skeptical of paying for it. The window for this particular arbitrage opportunity is likely quite short.
Building something of lasting value requires the harder work of developing real expertise, conducting original research, or creating genuinely unique perspectives. It means putting in the time to become someone worth listening to rather than just someone who can generate plausible-sounding text quickly. That’s always been true, and AI hasn’t changed it.
