Summary:
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Creatorpalooza at The Studio featured panels on AI avatars, brand partnerships, and mental health in the creator economy.
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HeyGen showcased AI avatar technology, allowing creators to produce video content without cameras or crews.
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Stan revealed that their AI agent Stanley wrote, edited, and scheduled a 10-post social media campaign.
What’s Trending brought its second annual Creatorpalooza to The Studio at Inn Cahoots on March 15, gathering creators, brands, and platforms for an afternoon of conversations centered on AI, monetization, and the future of the creator economy.
The free event, co-presented by HeyGen, Stan, LOSTiN, and ATX Creator Meetups, featured panels on brand partnerships, AI avatars, LinkedIn content creation, mental health in the creator economy, and podcast growth.
What’s Trending founder and CEO Shira Lazar produced the event alongside James Del of Independent Media Collective, opening the afternoon by framing the day’s thesis: that showing up consistently and the tools that make it possible now define success in the creator space.
HeyGen co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer Wayne Liang took the stage to demo the company’s AI avatar technology, telling attendees they no longer need cameras or crews to produce video content. He shared the story of a Texas-based athlete trainer who grew his TikTok from under 100 followers to more than 20,000 in 30 days using a HeyGen avatar, and is now approaching 40,000 followers. Liang also teased a new product at the event: Live Avatar, a real-time interactive video tool available at liveavatar.com.
“You can have a real-time interactive conversation as if on Zoom or Google Meet or whatever,” Liang said of the technology. “Same avatar, but new technology.”
Stan founder John Hu drew one of the afternoon’s biggest reactions when he revealed that his upcoming 10-post social media campaign was written, edited, captioned, scheduled, and tracked entirely by Stan’s AI agent called Stanley, without any human involvement beyond Hu’s own on-camera filming.
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“All 10 of them were written by our Stanley engine, our agent Stanley, because it deeply understands my voice and my story,” Hu said.
Stan, which counts Gary Vaynerchuk as an investor, has helped creators generate over $300 million in sales over the past three years. Hu told the crowd the company is working to democratize what top creators currently spend millions on: a full content operation run by AI.
“We’ve learned the workflow and we’ve turned that into an agent that now everyone can use,” he said.
Wall Street trader and content creator Peter Tuchman, known online as the Einstein of Wall Street, also made a surprise appearance, urging attendees to start investing immediately. “There’s no bad time to invest in the market,” he said, pointing to the S&P 500 as an accessible entry point for beginners.
Lazar has been attending SXSW for over 15 years and described Creatorpalooza as a real-world extension of what What’s Trending has always done online, spotting creator culture early and building a space for collaboration off the feed.
