In the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), content is cheap, but trust is expensive. When the digital world is saturated with fakes, where can we find genuine connection? Recently, at Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund’s JUMPSTARTER 2026 forum, three entrepreneurs who built some of the world’s largest cultural communities—Ray Chan, CEO of MemeStrategy (HKEX: 2440) and Co-Founder of 9GAG; Patrick Lee, Co-Founder and Founding CEO of Rotten Tomatoes; and Kun Gao, Founder of GGWP and Crunchyroll—gave a surprisingly unified answer.

The panelists unanimously agreed that while AI has dramatically lowered the barrier to content creation, it has also triggered an unprecedented crisis of trust. With AI-generated content and bot accounts proliferating, establishing authenticity has become the primary task for all community builders. In response, they all pointed to a clear trend: offline interaction and physical experiences are key to rebuilding trust.

Kun Gao, founder of the massive anime powerhouse Crunchyroll, stated frankly that online identities are difficult to verify. He said, “The biggest challenge is, when you can’t tell if the user in front of you is a real person or a machine, how do you build a sense of authenticity?” Patrick Lee, co-founder of the leading global film and TV rating platform Rotten Tomatoes, shared this sentiment, emphasizing that physical events provide an irreplaceable foundation of trust and require careful cultivation, much like “growing a bonsai tree.”

Ray Chan approached it from another angle, arguing that the extreme saturation of digital content has, in turn, created a strong market demand for physical goods and offline assets.

Because of AI’s advancements, people are actually starting to look for things that are more real, more tangible. I think that might be the real opportunity.

The panel's final consensus was that as products and content become increasingly commoditized by AI, authentic leadership and physical connection become the irreplaceable differentiating advantages. In this new landscape, only leaders who can master both the digital and physical realms to build trust will be able to create truly resilient and valuable communities.