With the rise of AI-generated content (AIGC), how long will the future content 'tail' become? What social issues will this bring?

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No problem. Regarding the topic of AIGC and the Long Tail Effect, let me share my thoughts. It's quite fascinating because it's poised to fundamentally change how we access information and pursue entertainment.

First, Let's Talk About the "Long Tail Effect" in Plain Language

Imagine a massive online bookstore, like Amazon.

The Head: There are blockbusters like Harry Potter, known to everyone, selling like crazy. This is "the head." Physical bookstores, with limited shelf space, mostly stock these bestsellers.
The Tail: But online bookstores are different; their "shelves" are infinite. Beyond bestsellers, they carry countless less popular books. For example, An 18th-Century Guide to French Wig Making, How to Take Great Photos of Your Pet Hamster... These books might only sell a few copies a year, but there are tens of thousands of them. If you add up the sales of all these "niche" products, you'll find their collective sum might even exceed that of the head's bestsellers. This long, low curve formed by countless niche products is the "Long Tail."

The core of the Long Tail Effect is: with distribution channels large enough, non-mainstream, niche demands can be met, and when aggregated, they form a massive market. The internet made this possible.

How Does AIGC Make This "Tail" Longer and More Robust?

If the internet gave the Long Tail "infinite shelf space," then AIGC (AI-Generated Content) provides this shelf with an "infinite production machine."

In the past, even the most niche demand required a "person" to spend time and effort to create content. That author wanting to write The Hamster Photography Guide had to understand photography and hamsters, and spend months writing and formatting it. The cost was high.

Now, with AIGC, the situation has completely changed:

Creation Cost Approaches Zero: You don't need to know how to draw. Input "a cat wearing an astronaut helmet eating spicy strips on the moon, Van Gogh style" into Midjourney, and you get a pretty decent image within seconds. You don't need to be a programmer to get AI to write a simple app. The cost of content production drops from days or months to minutes or even seconds.
Explosive Growth in Content Quantity: Since the cost is so low, the volume of content will skyrocket. Whereas the entire internet might have added one million new articles per day before, in the future, perhaps a hundred million pieces of diverse content (articles, images, music, videos, code...) could be generated every hour.
"Hyper-Personalization" Becomes Possible: While the Long Tail Effect serves "niche groups," AIGC can directly serve the "individual."
- A Bedtime Story Tailored for You: You could tell the AI, "Tell me a story where my son Xiao Ming takes his pet dog Wangcai on an adventure in Jurassic Park and ends up befriending a baby dinosaur." The AI can generate a unique story, just for your son, in seconds.
- Customized Music for You: "I want a song that blends classical piano with heavy metal rock, with a tempo suitable for my jogging, exactly 25 minutes long." The AI can produce that too.

So, how pronounced will the future Long Tail become?

The answer: It will become virtually infinite in length, and the "tail" will become exceptionally "fat." It will no longer just serve niche groups but satisfy every individual's every spontaneous, unique, and even slightly quirky idea. Each of us will live at the very end of our own personal "long tail."

What Social Problems Will This Bring?

This sounds fantastic, but like any radical social transformation, it hides significant issues.

1. Information Overload & the "Discovery" Crisis

The Problem: Before, we searched for a book in a bookstore; later, we searched for information in the giant library of the internet. In the future, we might be searching for a drop of clean water in an AI-generated ocean of infinite content. Content will be too vast, too cluttered, and of wildly varying quality.
Reflected in Daily Life: Search engines might be polluted by a deluge of AI-generated junk. Searching for "how to make scrambled eggs with tomatoes" might return ten thousand AI-generated recipes that seem correct but have chaotic steps. Finding genuinely useful content written based on real human experience will become extremely difficult. "Curators" and trustworthy recommendation platforms will become more important than ever.

2. Devaluation of Human Creativity & Survival Crisis

The Problem: When an "okay" illustrator needs a day to create an image that an AI can produce in 10 seconds, costing mere pennies, who will pay the human? This will hugely impact the entire creative industry.
Reflected in Daily Life: Many entry-level and intermediate positions for illustrators, designers, copywriters, translators, etc., may disappear. The value of human creators will be redefined—perhaps shifting from "skill" to "taste," "ideas," "emotional resonance," and "unique personal experience." The living space for average creators will be severely squeezed.

3. Collapse of Authenticity & Trust

The Problem: If news, images, videos, and audio can all be mass-produced by AI, how do we tell what's real anymore? "Seeing is believing" will become utterly obsolete.
Reflected in Daily Life: Fake news, propaganda, and scam messages will spread on a massive scale, more cheaply and deceptively. Deepfake technology can forge videos and voice recordings of anyone for blackmail or defamation. The basis of trust in society will erode. We will need to question everything we see and hear.

4. The Ultimate Form of the "Information Bubble"

The Problem: Current recommendation algorithms already tend to trap us in "information bubbles" (only seeing what we like and agree with). AIGC will make these bubbles vastly stronger and more personalized.
Reflected in Daily Life: Systems won't just recommend content you might like; they will actively create content specifically for you. If your worldview is that "the Earth is flat," the AI can continuously generate "scientific papers," "historical evidence," and "expert interviews" supporting this view. This will lead to further societal fragmentation, as people live in parallel realities entirely constructed by algorithms and AI.

5. Fading of Shared Cultural Memory

The Problem: Once, we had shared national memories. We watched the Spring Festival Gala together, discussed popular TV dramas together, listened to Jay Chou's songs together. These "head" contents formed part of our cultural identity.
Reflected in Daily Life: When everyone is immersed in their own unique, AI-tailored content world, what common topics will we have left to discuss? The era where generations or millions shared cultural symbols may fade. Society could become more atomized and isolated.

Summary

AIGC will make the content "Long Tail" unprecedentedly prosperous, satisfying our most subtle, personalized needs. However, like a flood, it also threatens to undermine our existing information order, trust systems, and cultural structures.

What we ordinary people can do may be to improve our media literacy, learn to critically evaluate information, and cherish and support genuinely human, warm creativity born from wisdom and emotion. In the future, "authenticity" and "quality human creation" might become the most scarce resources.