Show notes
Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.Consumers care less about how something was made. Justine Moore is a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz investing across AI and consumer, and one of the earliest backers of ElevenLabs. In this episode, she breaks down why AI microdramas are becoming one of the fastest-growing entertainment formats in the world, why China’s microdrama market has already overtaken its domestic box office, and why the U.S is only now catching up. Watch now: AI Microdramas Are Exploding We also explore why the first wave of AI video creators were attention seekers rather than storytellers, why that’s changing fast as real creatives move into the space, and why Justine thinks the “AI slop” debate misses the point entirely: slop existed long before AI, and the label won’t matter once most content is partially AI-made anyway.We close the episode on why Justine believes agents that work before you ask are the next real unlock in consumer AI. Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and XDownload the transcriptTimestamps(0:00) Meet Justine Moore (1:52) Generative Media's Inflection Point (4:23) AI Microdramas Are Exploding (10:02) Why AI Dramas Are New Forms of Entertainment (13:52) How to Create AI Microdramas (17:28) The Adoption of AI Microdramas (22:00) Content Becoming Timely vs. Timeless (25:00) Should Creators Be Disclosing AI Features? (33:45) How to Build AI Generative Media Startups(40:13) Justine's Favorite Agents (41:45) Is Consumer Tech Back? (45:15) Justine's Startup Ideas (46:40) Founders to WatchOur notes from this conversation1. AI video is finally good enough to stand on its own.Early AI videos attracted attention because they were novel. Today, that's no longer the story. As Justine describes, model quality has improved to the point where AI-generated video can hold a viewer's attention with a coherent storyline. The competitive advantage is shifting from the technology itself to the creativity of the people using it.2. Cheaper AI production is opening opportunities that global studios will eventually adopt.Microdramas are the clearest signals of what is actually possible. Creators are already using AI to generate backgrounds, visual effects and techniques that were previously handled with CGI. The expectation is that major film studios will follow the same path, not to replace production or talent, but to cut costs on specific parts of production. 3. Ollie started producing a micro drama. This is what is possible! Ollie built a short microdrama around the Nike origin story to stress-test the opportunities directly. The narrative, design and aesthetics came together fast and relatively cheaply. There are still gaps where these platforms can improve, for example: transitions between chapters aren’t natural yet, storytelling in the creator’s tone of voice has a way to go until perfect, and the cost to create these compounds very quickly once you’re iterating and constantly editing. Watch here4. Consumers care less about how something was madeJustine’s instinct is that mass-market audiences aren’t selecting for or against something because it’s AI-made, they’re asking whether it’s good. The people fixated on provenance are concentrated on X and Reddit, which is a different audience than the one actually consuming the content at scale.5. Timely vs. timeless is a more useful lens than AI vs. human.The human vs. AI comparison is the wrong split. Slop predates AI entirely, it was never a tooling problem, it’s a quality-and-intent problem, which is why “timeless” content (built to hold up regardless of when or how it was made) survives that axis and disposable content doesn’t. During the episode, we also talked about if creators should be disclosing if AI tools were used and if so how. However, Justine thinks labeling is a losing battle: content is heading toward being partially AI-made by default, at which point a label stops signaling anything useful.6. The hardest part of building here right now is differentiation.Competing with OpenAI or Google at the foundation-model layer has gotten expensive enough that most new entrants shouldn’t attempt it. The real contest is one layer up, at the app and workflow level: the question isn’t whether you can build on top of the models, it’s who you serve and why they stay instead of switching to the next thin wrapper.7. AI agents will matter more for individual creators than for big companies.Justine’s case is that solo creators and small teams are the most resource-constrained group in the market, so offloading admin and logistics to agents is a bigger unlock for them than for anyone already running a team to handle it.LinksFollow Ollie on X - https://x.com/ollieforsythFollow Justine on X - https://x.com/venturetwinsJustine's market map on AI Microdramas:Previous episodes includeIf you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.…Brought to you by Hostinger. Use code NEWECONOMIES for 10% off. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe