At the 2025 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) of the American Statistical Association—held in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, from August 2–7, and attended by over 5,000 scholars from around the world—Professor Wenxuan Ding presented her latest research findings.

AI to Address Participation Inequality in the Creator Economy, Unlocking the Potential for Platforms to Double Their Revenues

Fueled by digital technologies and the rise of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), the creator economy is experiencing rapid growth. Valued at USD 250 billion in 2023, the market is projected to nearly double to USD 480 billion by 2027. Yet behind this seemingly thriving industry lies a persistent challenge of participation inequality: while only 1% of users actively create content, over 90% remain passive “lurkers.” This imbalance not only exacerbates the concentration of resources and revenue but also threatens the long-term sustainability of the sector.

Professor Ding’s recent research introduces a dynamic learning model powered by GenAI that offers a promising pathway to address this challenge. For creators, the model provides data-driven guidance on entrepreneurial strategies—such as when to create, what type of content to produce, and when to monetize—while also enabling them to explore new growth trajectories and improve their chances of success in a highly competitive environment.

For platform managers, the GenAI agent can continuously learn from creators’ behaviors, identify their latent participation states, and design differentiated incentive mechanisms tailored to individual creator profiles. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that this model significantly outperforms traditional machine learning–based strategy models, with the potential to boost platform revenues by up to 300%.

By leveraging personalized AI-driven strategies to mitigate participation inequality, Professor Ding’s research contributes to building a fairer, more sustainable creator ecosystem—one that benefits both platforms and creators worldwide.