Creators hire AI like interns as they look to save costs on the creative process

Some creators are using generative AI to create audience-facing content — sparking a rise in so-called low-effort and high-volume “AI slop” content, a concern for some marketers — while others are using AI agents to interact with their fans. 

But while some creators churn out AI slop in the name of scale, others are using the tech more pragmatically — to perform back-end tasks they previously had to pay a human to do.

“I use AI for a lot of different stuff,” said video creator Max Schneider. “I refer to ChatGPT as ‘my assistant’ to all my friends.”

Digiday spoke to four creators to hear how they’re using AI tools instead of hiring extra help — or putting in the extra hours. 

Research assistant and sounding board

Schneider’s business is primarily a one-man show, with Schneider writing, filming and editing his humorous videos before posting them on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. To get second opinions during the creative process, he uses ChatGPT as a sounding board for potential concepts and ideas.

“It’s totally something you would do with an assistant,” said Schneider, who uses the paid version of ChatGPT. “Imagine your assistant was really smart, but sometimes out of touch, or not exactly dialed into the tone you want. That’s how I treat ChatGPT.”

Schneider’s use of ChatGPT goes beyond spitballing ideas. He also treats it as a research assistant, using it to fact-check his videos and do market research to see if different concepts might be popular. 

“If I have a random question — like, ‘how big was the largest baby ever born?’ — that’s something I’d ask,” he said.

Schneider said that he had considered hiring an assistant prior to his adoption of ChatGPT, and that he was still open to doing so for a person with the right skills, such as video editing. However, using ChatGPT has so far helped him avoid paying for a human assistant — a role whose average annual salary in the U.S. is roughly $53,000, according to the pay tracking website Salary.com.

Copyeditor

Some creators are finding that AI can improve their pre-existing content by acting as a copyeditor, cleaning up copy or giving suggestions to help streamline the tone of written copy. This is a distinct use case from creators who are using generative AI to create “AI slop” content from the ground up; in this case, creators are using AI to edit and revise content whose first draft was entirely human-made.

LinkedIn creator Elvi Caperonis, who regularly uses Grammarly’s AI tools to copyedit her written posts, credited the service for helping boost her following on the platform to nearly 250,000 — but cautioned that there are potential pitfalls to using AI as a copyeditor as well. When the company Favikon released an “Authenticity Score” tool ranking creators based on their use of AI tools to generate content, her posts were flagged as AI-generated, even though she had written all of the original copy herself. She said that she had asked Favikon to remove her from the ranking because she felt it inaccurately described her creative process.

“The algorithm has to be able to identify what is human-written, regardless of leveraging AI, as opposed to something that is 100 percent generated by AI,” she said, “and I don’t think we are 100 percent there yet.”

Grammarly’s head of education Jenny Maxwell pointed out that false positives are currently commonplace in AI detection software, citing a recent Stanford study that flagged the Declaration of Independence as written by AI. 

“It has nothing to do, necessarily, with any tool that was used, as much as it has to do with the rate of false positives on the side of the detection tools,” Maxwell said. “Most AI detectors are not trained to identify grammatical correctness as an indication of AI use.”

Social media consultant

In addition to using AI as a copyeditor, both Caperonis and her fellow LinkedIn creator April Little have started to use ChatGPT as a social media analyst and consultant. To gain a better understanding of how to best grow their engagement and following, they consistently upload their top-10 performing posts to different AI tools, asking the AI to analyze the posts and provide advice about the most effective days and times to post, as well as the specific topics that resonate most strongly with their followers. 

Little — who uses the premium versions of both Claude and ChatGPT — did not share specific numbers to show the growth of her following and engagement thanks to ChatGPT’s advice, but credited her growing engagement for helping her achieve “almost $20,000 in brand deals” in the two months since she started uploading all of her top-performing posts to ChatGPT. 

“I think I’m one of the few people that constantly analyzes my last 10 to 20 posts, because I’m always growing,” said Little, who boasts a following of over 270,000 and was named a 2025 Time 100 creator earlier this year. “I usually can get anywhere from 5,000 to 7,000 new followers every month.”

For ChatGPT Plus, Little spends $20 per month. In contrast, social media consultants charge an average of $50 to $250 per hour, according to the social media management platform RecurPost.

Contract reviewer

Creators are also using AI tools to help sidestep some of the legal fees that come with the brand partnership process, such as the reviewing of contracts. 

“More often than not, I use it to review terms and conditions — I’ll just put in the contract, and I’ll say, ‘in your opinion, who does this contract favor more?’” Schneider said. 

Some influencer marketing platforms have started to bake AI contract reviews directly into their process. Influencer affiliate platform Endlss, for example, rolled out an “agreements” feature last week that uses AI to automatically track terms and conditions discussed during negotiations, such as usage rights, key dates and licensing terms, then places them directly into contracts for both sides to sign.

“On the creator side, it creates your legalese, your Exhibit As and Bs. They could just take the URL, pop it in ChatGPT, and ask for a quick review to make sure there’s no exposure on their side,” said Endlss CEO David Abbey. “ChatGPT will come back saying ‘nope,’ and they just hit sign, and it’s done.”

Given the steep potential costs of legal fees, using AI tools to review and draft contracts could help creators save thousands of dollars. Lawyers typically charge an hourly rate of between $100 and $750 to review contract language, according to the legal consultancy UpCounsel.

AI can be an efficient tool to review contracts that pull heavily from standardized or boilerplate language, according to Laurie Selkowitz, a partner at the law firm Greenberg Glusker. However, she cautioned that using AI to review contracts also comes with potential risks, including incomplete referencing of external policies such as brand guidelines and FTC rules, as well as a potential breach in confidentiality if an AI model were to retain and train itself on proprietary contract language.

“Unlike attorneys who know their clients and their clients’ business, AI cannot fully weigh the commercial context and account for leverage, relationships, or long-term strategy,” Selkowitz said. “What is ‘bad’ in one deal may be acceptable or even strategic in another, and what is ‘standard’ in one industry may be outside the market in another.”