What AI Can Learn from YouTube and Wikipedia

Lessons abound as generative tech nears an inflection point

The internet reshaped creativity through access: global distribution, instant publishing, infinite reach. But access alone never sustained creative ecosystems. The human touch is needed to elevate access into opportunity.

What allowed creativity to thrive were the systems that innovative teams built around tech-enabled access, governing trust, attribution and participation in value. Few platforms shaped those systems more profoundly than Wikipedia and YouTube. As they celebrate their 25th and 21st birthdays, respectively, they offer a useful lens for considering the forces that have shaped today’s content economy and where creativity may be heading next—especially as AI becomes a dominant interface.

Wikipedia proved that large-scale collaboration can produce trusted knowledge when transparency was non-negotiable. Citations, edit histories and talk pages support accuracy and make claims auditable and trustworthy. The durable principle of trust following transparency helped turn Wikipedia into one of the most relied-upon reference points in human history. It empowers people to learn and explore ideas with unprecedented ease.

YouTube solved a different problem. It showed that creativity flourishes when contributors participate in the upside their work creates. By institutionalizing revenue sharing at scale, it transformed creative expression from a pastime into a profession for millions. The result was not just more content, but a sprawling, diverse creative ecosystem spanning nearly every imaginable niche.

Neither model is perfect. But together, they shaped the trust and economic systems that underpin today’s internet and, by extension, today’s creative economy.

For creators, they changed what felt possible. Wikipedia contributors knew their work would remain helpful, accurate and trusted. YouTubers could invest time and craft into their work knowing that success wouldn’t just bring attention, but sustainability. In both cases, content became something creators could build around, return to and improve over time, turning participation into ecosystems.

AI represents the next inflection point. Generative systems are reshaping how ideas are discovered, summarized and consumed. Once again, the central question is sustainability: whether creative work remains valued and trusted within the systems built on top of it.

If generative AI remains merely an extraction layer that absorbs creative work without preserving its lineage or sharing in the value it creates, it risks weakening the very ecosystem it depends on.

The future of creativity in an AI-mediated world won’t be decided by regulation or model architecture alone. It will be shaped by whether we choose to encode two proven principles into these systems: participation in value and clarity of provenance.

Wikipedia and YouTube have already shown what it takes to make creative ecosystems thrive at scale. If AI builds on those lessons, the next era of the internet could be defined by a deeper, more durable creative abundance.

It’s once again the human element that will unleash possibilities. We applaud the teams of people who’ve spent decades building the models that redefine collaborative creativity, while inspiring all our discussions around what we can create tomorrow.