AI Content Engine Economics: The Cost of Short-Form Video Production by AI Agents and by People

This technical report shows how the figures in the article "The AI Content Engine: How Claude Agents Replaced a Video Studio and Paid Influencers" were calculated. The subject is a working AI content engine at one company in the wellness category, targeting the US and other English-speaking markets. AI writes the scripts, AI avatars appear on camera, the voice is synthetic, and editing and publishing are handled by software written by Claude agents. The engine was built by one person with no technical background.

In its first 101 days the engine produced 1,497 short-form videos across 67 channels. The videos collected 8,250,024 organic views, and the channels have 1,126,322 followers and subscribers. Subscriptions cost $4,313.76: $0.52 per 1,000 views and $2.88 per video.

By our model, producing the same volume with people would take 42–78 staff and $179,000–1.21 million a month, 138 to 935 times the cost of the subscriptions. Buying the same reach from influencers would cost 3.8 to 57 times more. A scenario forecast for 100 AI presenters gives 10 to 178 million views a month.

The company operates under a non-disclosure agreement. The report contains only the published figures and how they were calculated; the underlying data is not published.