AI giants like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Stability AI have confronted loads of criticism for scraping information and ignoring others' mental property when coaching and working their underlying fashions. Now, a startup referred to as Story (which introduced $83 million in funding in the present day) is seeking to rebalance the steadiness with a blockchain-based platform that permits IP house owners to extra successfully observe utilization.

In accordance with CEO and co-founder SY Lee, the purpose is to create a extra “sustainable” IP ecosystem for the following technology of digital customers and builders. The startup's method is to think about IP like Lego and use blockchain to make that attainable. “Anybody can fork and remix the IP with out permission and reap the advantages,” Lee stated in an interview with currencyjournals. (The identify “Lego” is a bit ironic, given the various IP battles the toy-building firm has confronted over time.)

The spherical was led by Andreessen Horowitz, particularly its a16z crypto division, with participation from crypto investor Polychain Capital, in addition to Scott Trowbridge (SVP of Stability AI), K11 founder Adrian Chen, and digital artwork collector Cosomo de’ Medici, who goes by a pseudonym that evokes a well-known Renaissance dynasty. The brand new Collection B funding brings the overall quantity raised by Story and its guardian firm PIP Labs to $143 million.

Having a greater grasp of the worth of the IP when it’s used may generate important income for licensees. Hopefully, Story itself realizes important worth because the platform catches on and works as anticipated. The startup is presently valued at $2.25 billion after the funding spherical, in keeping with a supply near the corporate.

Story is constructing what it calls an “IP blockchain”: a system and platform that permits creators to assert possession of their content material, set utilization parameters round that IP, after which license it to others to be used.

However how that can work in apply stays to be seen. The plan, Li stated, is to make use of the funding to proceed creating the product, with the purpose of releasing it commercially later this 12 months. To date, the startup has been constructing its person base via a free, closed beta.

The corporate says that it has greater than 200 groups and “over 20 million addressable IPs” registered on the platform to this point, on account of partnerships with vogue design device Ablo, Japanese comics platform Sekai, and artwork collaboration startup Magma.

Chris Dixon, who co-led the a16z funding with Kara Wu, believes that new purposes primarily based on generative AI, and different developments prefer it, will considerably disrupt the financial fashions that underpin the standard manufacturing of visible artwork, literature, and music (or every other form of content material that we usually name “content material” in in the present day's digitalized world). The idea is that to maintain {the marketplace} for creativity thriving, we have to introduce new methods to monetize content material.

“A brand new wave of AI-powered search engines like google and yahoo present complete solutions quite than directing customers to web sites, and social networks more and more function AI-generated photos and movies,” Dixon wrote in a weblog publish. “These AI methods are presumably skilled on authentic human-created content material, however typically with out attribution or quotation of sources. With out attribution or compensation, what’s the incentive to publish authentic work on the open web?”

AI methods are only one space the place content material is and will likely be used, however it's an necessary one. So Story isn't the one participant on this area: Final week, one other startup referred to as Sahara AI introduced $43 million in funding to construct out its personal method to the best way to most successfully observe and monetize IP within the AI ​​period.

“Story differentiates itself from Sahara by specializing in the IP and information layer of AI options quite than on current AI infrastructure stacks,” Lee stated in response to a query in regards to the variations between the 2. “Sahara seems to be concentrating on mental property points, however these are primarily targeted on information, which is sort of completely different from IP authorized regimes. Story sees partnership potential because the IP layer of options like Sahara and Ritual, the place we will be shut companions.”

Lee himself has had a entrance row seat to the story of content material within the digital age (so to talk): he began out as an enterprising journalist within the UK, founding the platform byline.com in 2014. He went on to develop crowdsourced serialized fiction app Radish (a competitor to apps like Inkitt and Wattpad), which he finally offered to Kakao for $440 million.

Story, which Lee co-founded with CPO Jason Zhao, is in some methods a pure extension of that have.

“In case you have a look at everybody from Netflix to Disney, they're spending billions of {dollars} on content material, however they're really spending billions of {dollars} on advertising and marketing,” he stated. “It's form of a zero-sum struggle to get extra customers and extra subscribers.”

He stated the $440 million acquisition of his earlier firm, Radish, “made me rethink market dynamics.”

“I spent plenty of my enterprise capital cash on advertising and marketing,” he added, saying that is an try to construct a distinct mannequin for future creators that avoids that.

Whether or not it really works, and whether or not creators will need to use it, are questions that stay unanswered.

However those that are assured about how they are going to spend money on future situations are bullish.

“What Bitcoin did to cash and finance, tales are to content material and mental property,” Polychain Capital founder and CEO Olaf Carlsson Wee stated in a press release. “The primary section of Web3 was pushed by the 2008 monetary disaster and revolutionized cash via networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Now, advances in AI are driving the second section of Web3, which is able to revolutionize mental property.”