Recently, I’ve been reflecting on the trends in AIGC. Honestly, I think many people underestimated the potential of this field until a few years ago.

AIGC basically refers to the overall technology of generating content using artificial intelligence. Alongside professionally created PGC and user-generated UGC, the category of AI-generated content has been established. Everyone knows about the explosive success of ChatGPT, but surpassing 100 million monthly active users in just one month was an unprecedented speed compared to any previous product.

What’s interesting is that it wasn’t limited to just text generation. The image generation domain has also rapidly matured, and now many people find it normal to instruct AI to draw pictures. Since the concept of GANs appeared in 2014, it’s taken over ten years to finally reach this point.

The fusion of blockchain industry and AIGC is also an exciting development. Platforms like Art Blocks created a system to record programmable generative content immutably as NFTs. When users purchase art, a randomly generated hash runs a script, resulting in a one-of-a-kind NFT. Later, a major exchange launched its first AI product, allowing users to generate new NFTs by adding descriptive text. I believe this was the first successful example of an “image-for-image” application in the blockchain space.

The pace of AIGC’s evolution in 2022 was truly astonishing. What was still experimental at the beginning of the year rapidly reached a professional level within a few months, with the quality of generated content improving dramatically. Looking at current trends, AIGC is making the realization of metaverse implementations more feasible. It’s no longer just a concept; it’s starting to function as a means to produce high-quality content in large quantities and efficiently.

Personally, I believe the combination of AIGC and the metaverse will become the core of the digital ecosystem moving forward. It will significantly reduce the effort required for creation, while expanding the possibilities for creativity and expression infinitely. The day when users can freely explore virtual worlds is not far off. As the Web 3.0 era fully unfolds, I think AIGC will become an essential infrastructure to support it.