The AI design platform is paying creators based on engagement performance rather than audience size, marking its transition from a tool into a platform where creators can earn directly. The launch follows an AI agent marketplace the company introduced in March.
Picsart has launched a creator monetisation programme open to all of its more than 130 million users, with no minimum follower count and no invite list.
The programme, called Earn with Picsart, pays creators based on how their content performs rather than how large their audience is, positioning it as a direct challenge to the follower-scale model that governs most platform monetisation.
The mechanic is campaign-based. Creators browse a dashboard of current prompts and creative challenges, produce original content using Picsart’s tools, post it to their own Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or X accounts, and submit the URL along with a brief description of how they made it within Picsart.
Earnings are calculated from views, comments, shares, and reach. Funds can be withdrawn through Stripe. Picsart says that generating and posting AI images without genuine creative effort will not drive meaningful engagement or earnings.
One example campaign asks creators to produce animated characters using Picsart Aura, the platform’s AI conversational assistant, which generates and animates images and videos through text or voice prompts. The breadth of eligible content types is wide: tutorials, aesthetic edits, and short-form videos are all cited as qualifying formats.
Hovhannes Avoyan, Picsart’s founder and CEO, described the launch as a structural correction in an industry that has historically undercompensated everyday creators.
“The creator economy has a structural problem: platforms have never truly committed to compensating everyday creators,” he said. “It’s open, structured, and straightforward: show up, make things, and if your content performs, you get paid.”
Picsart was founded in 2011 and reached unicorn status in 2021 after a $130 million Series C led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Sequoia, G Squared, Tribe Capital, and DCM Ventures, among others.
The creator monetisation launch follows an AI agent marketplace the company introduced in March 2026, through which creators can hire AI assistants for tasks including resizing and remixing social content and editing product photos on Shopify. The two moves together signal Picsart’s push from a standalone editing application towards a creator economy platform.
