Can the creator economy stay afloat in a flood of AI slop?

Can the creator economy stay afloat in a flood of AI slop?

Online creators and their business models were on our mind this week after mega-popular YouTuber MrBeast announced that his company is buying fintech startup Step, followed by Hollywood studios sending a flurry of cease-and-desist letters to ByteDance over the launch of its new video generation model Seedance 2.0. Those seemingly unconnected headlines suggest a media…

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7 days until ticket prices rise for Disrupt 2026

7 days until ticket prices rise for Disrupt 2026

Super Early Bird pricing for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ends February 27 at 11:59 p.m. PT. That gives you one week to secure the biggest savings of the year — up to $680 off individual passes and up to 30% off community passes. Register now to lock in at the lowest rate. From October 13-15 at Moscone West in San Francisco,…

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Wikipedia blacklists Archive.today after alleged DDoS attack

Wikipedia blacklists Archive.today after alleged DDoS attack

Wikipedia editors have decided to remove all links to Archive.today, a web archiving service that they said has been linked to more than 695,000 times across the online encyclopedia. Archive.today — which also operates under several other domain names, including archive.is and archive.ph — is perhaps most widely used to access content that’s otherwise inaccessible behind…

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Microsoft’s new gaming CEO vows not to flood the ecosystem with ‘endless AI slop’

Microsoft’s new gaming CEO vows not to flood the ecosystem with ‘endless AI slop’

Microsoft announced a major gaming shakeup on Friday, with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer departing the company, along with Xbox President Sarah Bond. Spencer will be replaced by former Instacart and Meta executive Asha Sharma. With Sharma’s most recent role as the president of Microsoft’s CoreAI product, these moves suggest that Microsoft might be doubling…

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The creator economy’s ad revenue problem and India’s AI ambitions

The creator economy’s ad revenue problem and India’s AI ambitions

The creator economy is evolving fast, and ad revenue alone isn’t cutting it anymore. YouTubers are launching product lines, acquiring startups, and building actual business empires. In fact, MrBeast’s company bought fintech startup Step, and his chocolate business is outearning his media arm. This isn’t just one creator’s strategy. For many, it’s the new playbook.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Rebecca Bellan unpack how creators are diversifying beyond ads,…

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