In September 2025, I'd become increasingly convinced that a fieldbuilding program for content creators could solve a long-standing bottleneck of expanding reach and trust beyond the AI safety and EA bubble.
I had graduated from UCLA a few months earlier when I came across the AI-2027 report which had a significant impact on me. I rejected my six-figure tech consulting offer, left my place in LA, and moved to the first place I could find in the Bay Area to contribute to AI Safety. Contrary to my expectations, only a small subset of people were working towards what seemed to be far more important than building yet another AI B2B SaaS.
In my initial few months of moving to SF, I conducted creator events and campaigns with orgs like CAIS, one of which ended up reaching over 2.5M+ views through 5 creators. While this was impactful, it was clear that we were heavily talent bottlenecked on this new kind of audience builder and educator. These were- The next Rob Miles. The blogger who speaks to Gen Z. The next AI-2027-shaped artifact. And, just as importantly, communicators like Petr Lebedev embedded at Palisade Research who can power dissemination from inside the orgs doing the work.
Note: Early bird Applications for Cohort 2.0 are now OPEN!Apply
Video: Intro video for Frame 1.0
The Fellowship
We ran our first cohort from January-March 2026- a San Francisco based residential accelerator for content creators focused on AI safety with 11 fellows selected out of 150+ applications. Our applicant pool included youtubers, viral tiktokers, established creators interested in AI safety, creators with unique backgrounds in law, journalism, and defense, all focused on different sub-niche audiences.
Frame Fellows at the final showcase at Lighthaven, Berkeley
Frame’s first iteration was a success- producing 260+ pieces of content reaching 7M+ estimated views over just 8 weeks. Fellows significantly grew their reach and audience (many 2-12x'ed), and 60% received post-program funding or contracts/partnerships from FLI, Control AI, BlueDot, Seismic, and others. Moreover, fellows leveraged their audiences to build policy outreach tools, communities that gained 100+ signups in the first week, protests, and research datasets.
Fellow Mateus De Sousa grew from 1,500 to 5,000+ followers and surged from 20,000 to 200,000 average views per video. He launched a YouTube channel focused on AI politics and industry accountability, got hired by Seismic for content strategy, and secured Future of Life Institute funding to continue full-time for a year after the fellowship. He also received interest from BlueDot and 80,000 Hours.
Fellow Veronica Hylakproduced 10+ YouTube videos, nearly doubled her channel to 400k views and 35k subs, and secured a contract with CAIS. Her videos on AI psychosis led three universities to reach out directly. A student built their thesis on preventing AI psychosis specifically because of her content. Veronica is also building a research dataset from hundreds of DMs she's received from people with AI psychosis.
Fellow Michael Trazzi Michael organised a 200+ person protest outside Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI, attended by Scott Alexander, Nate Soares, and Daniel Kokotajlo, and covered by The New York Times and The Atlantic. His SB-1047 video is now a required resource in a UC Berkeley policy course. He is building "Stop the AI Race" into a sustained movement targeting a 1,000-person protest.
The fellowship also created structured sessions for mentorship, feedback, and collaboration. Here's a few features of the program:
Biweekly standups to track progress and surface blockers
left: fellow Caitlin pitching her theory of change
top right pic: fellows Michael & Lauren discussing content strategies
bottom right: Fellow Janet receiving feedback on her video
Group content sessions to enable cross-collaboration. Every week fellows came together to make fun content with each other!
Front-loaded mentorship. We packed most mentor sessions into the first week, so the rest of the program could be spent executing rather than scheduling.
left: Chana Messinger (AI in Context, 80000 hours, 350k+ )
right: Drew Spartz (Species, 350k+)
Social nights, games, casual chats to build community. SF has a big creator and founder community. Frame conducted many events to give our fellows opportunities to network.
left: fellows Gaetan and Vin drinking Hot Chocolate (that I made)
right: creator dinner with other creators in SF
The group house. This was unofficial, but we decided to live together throughout the program as well! This enabled bonding in a way that wouldn't have happened across separate apartments.
left: right after a snack run
right: We love Sterling!!!
The Conversation event: We also ended strong with a flagship event at Lighthaven, bringing together 100 leading creators, journalists, media voices, and AI safety folks to discuss the most effective strategies for educating the public.
The Conversation at Lighthaven to celebrate and discuss AI Safety media
Testimonials:
"We went from EAG to seeing Bernie Sanders to SXSW to Lighthaven to meeting researchers I'd followed on Twitter for years" ~Caitlin Yardley (Creator 6k) - Frame Fellow
"I've probably looked at a thousand grant proposals over the years, and the Frame Fellowship seems like the highest-leverage funding opportunity I've come across." ~Drew Spartz (Species - 300k) - Leading AI Safety Youtuber
"I would've benefited greatly from the support that Frame offers when I was starting out on YouTube. It can be a very lonely career, esp in the beginning. This is likely to reduce burnout and greatly increase their odds of success." ~Siliconversations (150k) - AI Safety animations channel
"This program opened my eyes. Without it, I am 100% positive I would've advanced maybe 5% of what I did in 2 months. A critical part of the journey for me." ~Veronica Hylak (Youtuber 25k) - Frame Fellow
What we learnt
Now the most important part- what did we learn, and what's next!
1. Optimize for inputs, not outcomes. The inputs that matter: more videos, more hypothesis testing, shorter feedback loops, useful connections, sharper theories of change, and calls-to-action that map to them. Outcomes follow inputs.
2. Clarity in schedule, logistics. Work expands to fill the time you give it. Cohort 2 will have more forcing functions and clearer weekly deliverables. Admin work- Reimbursements, visa-related compliance, took significantly longer than I budgeted for.
3. Longer cohort. Fellows consistently flagged that 8 weeks wasn't enough. Cohort 2 might run 10 weeks in-person plus a 2-week remote pre-program.
4. Expand the team. For Cohort 2 we’re looking to hire a team of 2-3. (If you want to get involved, details at the end of the post)
5. Deeper mentor and partner org involvement. In Cohort 1, mentors mostly gave one-off sessions. Partner orgs were similar. For Cohort 2 we're going to match mentors and orgs to specific creators for maximum impact!
Looking Ahead
The next few years will likely see AI hit a tipping point that drives massive societal and economic change. As AI climbs the list of things people care about, that attention can be leveraged: to empower action, build movements, and demand AI that enables democracy and agency rather than stripping them away.
Doing that requires communicators who can reach people with trust and scale. They are the bridge.
We are guided by three foundational pillars:
Find & Accelerate new voices & projects through the fellowship and training resources
Support & brief existing voices & projects- through grants, partnerships and other creator tools.
Connect AI safety orgs to our vetted network of creators, comms leads, and amplifiers
What we're aiming for in the next year:
120+ vetted creators trained, with trusted communities, increasing AI salience across millions more people
Become the first point of contact for AIS orgs and companies that want to communicate with audiences at scale.
Incubate projects that make AI safety a more salient issue and build a greater public movement.
How to Get Involved
Cohort 2 is scheduled from August to November 2026. There are a few ways to plug in:
We're looking for ambitious communicators who can own a niche, and come up with creative ways to increase distribution.
Join the Team
We're hiring for Cohort 2. I’m looking for high-agency operators. You’re a good fit if you think you can run the program end-to-end just by yourself. Email me at akshyae@framefellowship.com your email will be the application. We are a non-profit that works at startup speed.
Partner with us
If you run an AI safety org doing impactful work, we are opening a new "Amplifier" track where we embed promising fellows to amplify your messages. We can help you 10x your impact by reaching more people in your target audience. get in touch
In September 2025, I'd become increasingly convinced that a fieldbuilding program for content creators could solve a long-standing bottleneck of expanding reach and trust beyond the AI safety and EA bubble.
I had graduated from UCLA a few months earlier when I came across the AI-2027 report which had a significant impact on me. I rejected my six-figure tech consulting offer, left my place in LA, and moved to the first place I could find in the Bay Area to contribute to AI Safety. Contrary to my expectations, only a small subset of people were working towards what seemed to be far more important than building yet another AI B2B SaaS.
I wanted to change this. The power of a good external-facing comms effort is underrated. AI in Context, If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies, Rob Miles is the first interaction with AI Safety for many, including mine. It has the power to empower mainstream audiences to act by creating trust and relatability, and meeting them where they’re at- social media. Moreover, I felt that I had the right background to do this- my experience as an activist, ex-founder building products for clients Google & BCG, and operator running one of the largest AI Safety conferences in LA.
In my initial few months of moving to SF, I conducted creator events and campaigns with orgs like CAIS, one of which ended up reaching over 2.5M+ views through 5 creators. While this was impactful, it was clear that we were heavily talent bottlenecked on this new kind of audience builder and educator. These were- The next Rob Miles. The blogger who speaks to Gen Z. The next AI-2027-shaped artifact. And, just as importantly, communicators like Petr Lebedev embedded at Palisade Research who can power dissemination from inside the orgs doing the work.
That's when Austin Chen (who was also interested in this) and I started Frame Fellowship, to find and accelerate the next big communicators in AI safety.
Note: Early bird Applications for Cohort 2.0 are now OPEN! Apply
Video: Intro video for Frame 1.0
The Fellowship
We ran our first cohort from January-March 2026- a San Francisco based residential accelerator for content creators focused on AI safety with 11 fellows selected out of 150+ applications. Our applicant pool included youtubers, viral tiktokers, established creators interested in AI safety, creators with unique backgrounds in law, journalism, and defense, all focused on different sub-niche audiences.
Frame Fellows at the final showcase at Lighthaven, Berkeley
The program offered various benefits such as mentorship from leading creators in AI Safety such as Rob Miles, AI in Context, Species, Doom Debates and others, office and studio space, generous funding, and access to the bay area AI Safety, founder, and creator communities.
Frame’s first iteration was a success- producing 260+ pieces of content reaching 7M+ estimated views over just 8 weeks. Fellows significantly grew their reach and audience (many 2-12x'ed), and 60% received post-program funding or contracts/partnerships from FLI, Control AI, BlueDot, Seismic, and others. Moreover, fellows leveraged their audiences to build policy outreach tools, communities that gained 100+ signups in the first week, protests, and research datasets.
Some examples of our fellows work-
some popular videos by our creators
Some Success Stories-
Check out other fellow stories on our website!
Frame itself also made headlines in The Washington Post and The Transformer, and a mention in SF Standard.
Other Features of the program (with pics!)
The fellowship also created structured sessions for mentorship, feedback, and collaboration. Here's a few features of the program:
left: fellow Caitlin pitching her theory of change
top right pic: fellows Michael & Lauren discussing content strategies
bottom right: Fellow Janet receiving feedback on her video
left: Chana Messinger (AI in Context, 80000 hours, 350k+ )
right: Drew Spartz (Species, 350k+)
left: fellows Gaetan and Vin drinking Hot Chocolate (that I made)
right: creator dinner with other creators in SF
left: right after a snack run
right: We love Sterling!!!
The Conversation at Lighthaven to celebrate and discuss AI Safety media
Testimonials:
"We went from EAG to seeing Bernie Sanders to SXSW to Lighthaven to meeting researchers I'd followed on Twitter for years" ~Caitlin Yardley (Creator 6k) - Frame Fellow
"I've probably looked at a thousand grant proposals over the years, and the Frame Fellowship seems like the highest-leverage funding opportunity I've come across." ~Drew Spartz (Species - 300k) - Leading AI Safety Youtuber
"I would've benefited greatly from the support that Frame offers when I was starting out on YouTube. It can be a very lonely career, esp in the beginning. This is likely to reduce burnout and greatly increase their odds of success." ~Siliconversations (150k) - AI Safety animations channel
"This program opened my eyes. Without it, I am 100% positive I would've advanced maybe 5% of what I did in 2 months. A critical part of the journey for me." ~Veronica Hylak (Youtuber 25k) - Frame Fellow
What we learnt
Now the most important part- what did we learn, and what's next!
1. Optimize for inputs, not outcomes. The inputs that matter: more videos, more hypothesis testing, shorter feedback loops, useful connections, sharper theories of change, and calls-to-action that map to them. Outcomes follow inputs.
2. Clarity in schedule, logistics. Work expands to fill the time you give it. Cohort 2 will have more forcing functions and clearer weekly deliverables. Admin work- Reimbursements, visa-related compliance, took significantly longer than I budgeted for.
3. Longer cohort. Fellows consistently flagged that 8 weeks wasn't enough. Cohort 2 might run 10 weeks in-person plus a 2-week remote pre-program.
4. Expand the team. For Cohort 2 we’re looking to hire a team of 2-3. (If you want to get involved, details at the end of the post)
5. Deeper mentor and partner org involvement. In Cohort 1, mentors mostly gave one-off sessions. Partner orgs were similar. For Cohort 2 we're going to match mentors and orgs to specific creators for maximum impact!
Looking Ahead
The next few years will likely see AI hit a tipping point that drives massive societal and economic change. As AI climbs the list of things people care about, that attention can be leveraged: to empower action, build movements, and demand AI that enables democracy and agency rather than stripping them away.
Doing that requires communicators who can reach people with trust and scale. They are the bridge.
We are guided by three foundational pillars:
Find & Accelerate new voices & projects through the fellowship and training resources
What we're aiming for in the next year:
How to Get Involved
Cohort 2 is scheduled from August to November 2026. There are a few ways to plug in:
Early bird Applications are OPEN! APPLY
We're looking for ambitious communicators who can own a niche, and come up with creative ways to increase distribution.
Join the Team
We're hiring for Cohort 2. I’m looking for high-agency operators. You’re a good fit if you think you can run the program end-to-end just by yourself. Email me at akshyae@framefellowship.com your email will be the application. We are a non-profit that works at startup speed.
Partner with us
If you run an AI safety org doing impactful work, we are opening a new "Amplifier" track where we embed promising fellows to amplify your messages. We can help you 10x your impact by reaching more people in your target audience. get in touch
Consider Donating
We're raising funds for Cohort 2. Reachout if you’re interested.