The question isn’t whether AI will replace creativity, it’s how it will expand it (Brains Byte Back Podcast)

Will AI scale creativity or stifle it? A CEO’s take on AI and the future of content creation

The fear around AI in the creative world isn’t imagined, and it isn’t irrational. When synthetic artists top charts and virtual influencers sign brand deals, it’s reasonable for creators to wonder what happens to their voice, their livelihood, and their industry. 

That’s why the conversation around AI doesn’t stop at what it can produce. It is also challenging to determine what it could replace. 

However, focusing only on replacement misses another, equally urgent reality: most creators aren’t being pushed out by machines. They’re being buried under the workload. The existing crisis, happening right now, isn’t a lack of creativity, but it’s a lack of time, energy, and support to sustain it.

“The modern creator spends about 20 percent of their time on visionary work, and about 80 percent doing everything else,” says Shahrzad Rafati, founder and CEO of RHEI, a platform offering content creators a team of artificial intelligence agents that execute tasks like creative strategy, content production, and audience engagement. The dream team that any new or experienced creator would be grateful to lean on for support.

From analytics to community management, and everything in between, the invisible labour around creativity has quietly become its biggest enemy.

“Creators today wear too many hats. 75 percent of creators are burned out. So how do we take someone who’s overwhelmed and promote them to visionary-in-chief? By giving them an intelligent team built in their voice, so they can focus on what they do best,” adds Rafati. 

In this episode of Brains Byte Back, Shahrzad Rafati offers a reframing of how we view AI’s relationship with the creative world. One that suggests retiring the cynical misconception that AI replaces creativity. Instead, emphasizing the importance of focusing on human signals and how it will expand creativity.  

“A lot of AI content is like junk food,” she adds. Consumable, addictive, but not nourishing. People aren’t rejecting technology—they’re rejecting content without meaning, context, or consent.

That’s where the fear gets misplaced. The threat isn’t AI replacing creativity, but rather creativity being buried under friction. In this model, AI isn’t the artist. It’s the apprentice.

Culture trains AI. AI amplifies culture.

But humans—through choice, authorship, and responsibility—decide what that amplification becomes.

You can listen to the full episode on Spotify, Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, Listen Notes, PodBean, and Radio Public.

Find out more about Shahrzad Rafati here.

Learn more about RHEI here.

Reach out to today’s host, Erick Espinosa – erick@sociable.co

Get the latest on tech news – https://sociable.co/ 

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Transcript:

Sharzad Rafati:
My name is Sharzad Rafati. I’m the founder and CEO of RHEI, based in Vancouver, Canada.

Erick Espinosa:
Happy to have you here because I feel like the creative world is kind of having a moment right now. And that’s odd to say because I feel like obviously the creative world is attention-seeking, right? But when it comes to AI, I feel like mainstream media has been covering the topic of AI-generated artists, the debate around it. We’ve all seen it in the news — Norwood or Breaking Rust. Everyone basically has something to say about AI when it comes to the creative world, and it brings these bigger questions within the industry.

So people are really asking whether it’s going to amplify creativity or if it’s going to automate it out of existence. I want to unpack this with you today because you’re in a unique position — you’re building tools dedicated for creators to scale. Tools they can leverage so they don’t lose their voice, but instead find more efficient ways to develop their creativity. Is that a fair way to describe it?

Sharzad Rafati:
It is. If you think about it, let’s look at the physics of creativity. The modern creator spends about 20% of their time on visionary work — the actual art, the creation. And they spend about 80% of their time doing everything else: metadata, analytics, trend analysis, deciding what to work on, managing their community, editing content, logistics.

So when we say “amplify,” we don’t really mean generating content. We mean collapsing the latency between vision and reality. And that’s important. We talk a lot about decoupling scale from dilution. That’s the new physics of the creator economy.

Practically, what does that look like? With Made, we’ve built an intelligent team that’s personalized to your taste, proactive, and effortless to work with. They act as an organization of one.

Instead of a creator spending four hours analyzing why numbers dropped or why engagement declined, the agent does that. It looks at the data, understands trends, and proactively drafts solutions. Maybe your thumbnail didn’t perform — here are options. Maybe engagement dropped because you didn’t respond to fans — here are replies in your voice for you to choose from.

That removes a massive workflow burden. Creators today wear too many hats. Seventy-five percent of creators are burned out. So how do we take someone who’s overwhelmed and promote them to visionary-in-chief? By giving them an intelligent team built in their voice so they can focus on what they do best.

It’s about taking focus away from silicon and putting it back on the human signal.

Erick Espinosa:
You’ve mentioned “the new era of creativity” in recent panels. What do you mean by that?

Sharzad Rafati:
I think of it as a symbiotic relationship between AI and humanity. The future shouldn’t be defined by displacement or replacing human creativity. It should be radical amplification — removing friction between inspiration and execution.

We need to retire the cynical misconception that AI replaces creativity. Instead, we should focus on human signal. AI should be a tireless apprentice, handling executive work, while humans master their creativity and act as architects of their output.

It’s less about how something was made and more about why it was dreamed.

Erick Espinosa:
That mirrors what we’re seeing in other industries — doctors, finance — using agentic AI as teammates, not replacements. How did you personally arrive here? What’s your background?

Sharzad Rafati:
I’m a proud Canadian, but I grew up in Tehran during the war. Content was rationed. Inequality was visible and constant. We had access to four TV channels, but even then I saw how creativity could shift perspective, inform, inspire, and connect people to the world.

From a young age, I wanted to create a different future — not just for myself, but for others. When I moved to Canada at 17, I spoke little English and had no computer skills, but I believed deeply in technology and creativity. Content helped me learn the language and connect culturally.

That experience solidified my belief that creativity is more than entertainment — it empowers human potential. That belief is what RHEI was born from.

We evolved from our roots in the creator economy into building Made — a creative operating system with intelligent team members across the entire workflow. We’re leading the augmented creativity era responsibly. We don’t want humans to become prompt engineers. We want empathy and creativity to stay front and center.

Erick Espinosa:
RHEI has grown significantly — over 600 million monthly viewers — and artists like Diplo and T-Pain have used the platform. Can you talk about that growth?

Sharzad Rafati :
RHEI is the technology company behind Made. We’ve built solutions for IP owners and individual creators for years. Made is our belief in a creative operating system for humanity.

We began with enterprise partners — Warner Music Group, Paramount Global, Sony Pictures — helping them build audiences during the creator economy era. Now we’re reinventing ourselves for a world where content is abundant and creators are burned out.

Made automates the creative workflow end-to-end. We’re excited because it’s now a SaaS self-serve product, not just managed services. Every human can now have access to a dream team.

Erick Espinosa:
Have AI artists approached you? Does Made support that?

Sharzad Rafati:
No — our platform elevates the human signal. Our agents support ideation, thumbnails, editing, community management — everything around creativity — but they don’t replace it.

The critical question here is governance and authorship. A film director doesn’t operate the camera or sew costumes, but they are still the author. Humans must remain the CEOs. Our agents are employees.

AI can generate 50 thumbnails, but the human chooses what aligns with their soul and brand. That act of curation is authorship.

Erick Espinosa:
There’s controversy, but audiences still consume AI-generated work. How do you see that tension?

Sharzad Rafati:
A lot of AI content is like junk food. You can consume it, but it’s not nutrition. What people reject isn’t technology — it’s spiritual hollowness.

Humans crave connection with other humans. As synthetic content increases, authentic human creativity becomes more valuable. Scarcity increases value.

There’s also a crisis of consent — data scraped without licensing, artists unpaid. Ethical supply chains matter. That’s why we built Datapro — to treat data as monetizable currency for creators and protect their IP.

Erick Espinosa:
Efficiency matters — especially for solo entrepreneurs, single parents, people juggling multiple jobs.

Sharzad Rafati:
Exactly. Time is the real constraint. Our proactive agents remove friction. You don’t need to learn complex tools. You can delegate instantly. Adoption fails when platforms are hard to use. We’ve designed Made to be effortless.

Erick Espinosa:
I’m excited to try it. Pricing seems accessible too.

Sharzad Rafati:
We have multiple tiers and free trials. This was truly a pleasure.

Erick Espinosa:
If people want to learn more?

Sharzad Rafati:
You can reach us at info@rhei.com or sign up for a free trial at getmade.ai.

Erick Espinosa:
Thank you for joining me.

Sharzad Rafati:
Thank you so much.