Ted Murphy Launches COEY: An AI-First Media Company Announced at CES 2026
Influencer marketing pioneer Ted Murphy has launched COEY, an AI-first media technology company built to automate content creation at global scale. The company emerged from stealth during CES 2026 with a clear premise: AI will generate and distribute a significant share of what audiences consume, and brands need systems that keep pace.
"As the AI models improve, the distinction between man and machine will become a secondary concern for the consumer," said Murphy. "Our mission is to scale human creativity through intelligent machine collaboration."
The Content Crossover: 50% AI-Generated by 2028
COEY forecasts that by 2028, half of all internet content will be AI-generated. The company calls this milestone "The Content Crossover."
For marketers, the takeaway is simple: speed and relevance are now algorithmic. The edge goes to teams that orchestrate autonomous production while keeping tight human guardrails on brand, accuracy, and compliance.
From Influence to Automation
Murphy built IZEA in 2006, helping mainstream influencer marketing after early skepticism about paid content. That pattern is repeating with AI.
"Twenty years ago, people said influencer marketing would destroy trust. Today, being a creator is the most coveted career for Generation Alpha," Murphy said. "We are seeing the same pattern with AI."
COEY cites data momentum behind that shift. A recent NYU Stern study reported fully AI-generated visual ads beating human benchmarks, lifting click-through rates by up to 19%.
What COEY Is Building
COEY develops "Autonomous Content Machines" that produce AI avatars, brand campaigns, long-form posts, and internal comms with variable human oversight. A flagship example is COEY Cast, a daily podcast produced end-to-end by AI-research, synthesis, fact-checking, scripting, voice, and multi-platform publishing-at just a few dollars per episode.
- AI Automation: Intelligent workflows that plug into existing marketing and sales stacks.
- AI Studios: High-volume video, audio, and visual production for brands and agencies that need speed without sacrificing quality.
- AI Media: COEY-owned social channels and sites used as a live R&D lab to test formats and optimization before client rollout.
Why This Matters for Marketers
Distribution is increasingly AI-mediated, from feeds to search to ad delivery. Content that adapts fastest wins the slot.
- Stand up an AI content pipeline. Map use cases by risk level: low (variants, resizing, summaries), medium (ad concepts, short scripts), high (thought leadership, PR).
- Define oversight. Lock guardrails for facts, brand voice, compliance, and approvals. Automate everything else.
- Treat channels as labs. Ship more iterations, run tight A/B tests, and let performance data steer daily tweaks.
- Measure unit economics. Track cost per asset, time to publish, CTR, attention, CAC, LTV, and creative fatigue.
- Pilot AI-native formats. Avatars, programmatic podcasts, dynamic ad variants, and multilingual content at scale.
- Upskill your team. Build prompt fluency, QA workflows, and automation literacy. Consider an AI certification for marketing specialists to speed adoption.
Quality, Safety, and Brand Control
COEY's model uses variable human oversight to keep standards tight while output scales. The practical approach: automate generation, enforce brand and legal constraints in the workflow, and route sensitive pieces for human review.
Keep a hard line on factual accuracy, disclosure, data privacy, and bias testing. Audit prompts and logs. Build a clear incident process before volume spikes.
From Stealth to Scale
COEY has been operating in stealth with early customers that include Fortune 500 brands and leading AI firms. The company is now opening access to its systems and media network.
To learn more or explore partnerships, visit coey.com.
About COEY
COEY is an AI-first media technology company created to scale human creativity with intelligent machine collaboration. By operating its own media properties and deploying custom AI systems for brands, COEY offers a model-agnostic framework that evolves with the tech and delivers output at algorithmic speed.
Your membership also unlocks:
