A man, some AI and 300 websites.

Not very long ago, building a large online publishing network would have meant hiring developers, writers, designers and administrators — or spending years trying to become all of them.

Now one person can work with several AI systems and attempt something that would once have felt completely out of reach.

I’m doing exactly that with ReallyByte: a growing collection of websites about animals, history, transport, science, oddities and whatever else seems interesting at the time.

The ambition is roughly 300 sites. Whether the commercial side becomes modest, enormous or absolutely nothing remains to be seen.

That’s not the entire point.

The interesting part is that the project exists at all.

AI hasn’t made creativity or judgement irrelevant. Somebody still has to decide what matters, notice when the work feels lifeless, insist on personality, and refuse to publish generic nonsense simply because it was easy to generate.

What AI has done is change the scale of what an individual can attempt.

What if the business never becomes rich?

Then there will still be a collection of original things on the internet that weren’t there before: places to learn, explore, laugh and wander.

It would be nice to make money. It would be even nicer to make a ridiculous amount of money. But ownership, curiosity and the pleasure of making something have value beyond a bank balance.

The thought to take away

Maybe this is one of the early chapters of ordinary people becoming creators on a scale that used to require a company.

And if it all goes spectacularly wrong, at least the rubber duck has a job title.