Valid point / not a bad idea. One flaw might be that (successful and high quality) content creators are accustomed outsized rewards for their work. Ads pay very, very well for people creating content viewed by a lot of people.

Would AI companies be willing to match that (even 50% match)? If not, we might just end up with low paid copyrighters / ghost writers churning out large amounts of content for LLMs in subject areas where they don't necessarily have expertise.

I think Patreon-style backing has been proving out the viability of payment based creators. Technology Connections is largely funded by Patreon but puts out free content all the time. My guess is that once x402 becomes more standardized that Youtube, Substack, and other SaaS can add in paywall functionality which can help fund the free content for creators.