Generative AI models require large amounts of training data to enable their systems to produce advanced outputs. But the data therein often comes from copyright-restricted sources.
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Story, a San Francisco-based startup, said Wednesday it raised $80 million for a blockchain that aims to prevent artificial intelligence makers such as OpenAI from acquiring creators’ intellectual property rights without permission.
The funding round values the two-year-old company at $2.25 billion, people familiar with the matter told CNBC. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the information has not yet been made public.
Story said the company raised the money in a Series B round, typically the third major round of funding for a private startup after a seed and Series A round, led by Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z. .
Polychain, a cryptocurrency-focused venture capital firm, and Brevan Howard, the investment fund of British billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard, also participated.
Build “IP Legoland”
Blockchain is a decentralized repository that maintains an immutable record of activity. It is the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Story acts as a blockchain network, allowing creators to prove that they produced a piece of content and are the owners of the intellectual property rights by storing their IP on the platform.
The company’s technology works to protect the intellectual property rights of individuals and entities by embedding relevant terms, such as licensing fees and royalty-sharing arrangements, into smart contracts.
Smart contracts are digital contracts stored on the blockchain that automatically execute once a specific set of terms are met.
Story co-founder and CEO SY Lee explained to CNBC that this makes a copyright owner’s intellectual property “programmable” because it sets the rules for how their content can be used and the price for copying or remixing their work.
The benefit, Lee said, is that it effectively eliminates the middlemen typically involved in copyright theft disputes in the media sector.
“Now it has changed from IP to IP Lego,” Lee told CNBC. 「現在，你不需要通過律師。你不需要通過代理人。你不需要進行這種非常漫長的業務發展談判。你只需將你的許可、特許權使用費分享條款嵌入到小文件中即可.contract.”
Story makes money by charging network fees for any action that occurs on its network.
One example of a company using Story is Ablo, an artificial intelligence tool that allows users to create their own custom fashions using designs from household names like French designer clothing company Balmain and Italian luxury fashion house Dolce and Gabbana.
Brands are compensated for the use of fashion designers’ intellectual property through various respective licensing and revenue-sharing agreements.
Combating Artificial Intelligence Copyright Theft
Story is now trying to use its technology to solve a timely problem – stealing copyrighted media from the web through powerful generative AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
These models power the many artificial intelligence chatbots that are increasingly used as an alternative to search, and they require large amounts of training data to enable their systems to generate advanced and informative answers to user queries. .
But the data that powers these AI models often comes from copyright-restricted sources.
The New York Times was a big hit last year Microsoft OpenAI filed a copyright lawsuit seeking damages for misusing the newspaper’s intellectual property rights.
In its lawsuit, The Times cited several examples of GPT-4 producing modified versions of material originally published by the newspaper.
Lee said big tech companies like Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI and reportedly owns 49% of the company, “essentially steal your intellectual property for training purposes and actually gain access to all of it.” Advantages”.
In a March motion to dismiss parts of The New York Times’ lawsuit, Microsoft said such claims were “unsubstantiated” and that the lawsuit advanced a false narrative of “apocalyptic futurology.”
Microsoft’s lawyers argued that the content used to train the models “does not displace the market for the work but rather teaches the model language.”
Microsoft did not immediately comment when contacted by CNBC about Lee’s remarks.
Story’s Lee told CNBC that training such AI models requires good intellectual property rights, but added that AI companies could suffer long-term consequences if they fail to adequately compensate publishers and creators from whom they obtain large amounts of intellectual property material. loss.
“Artificial intelligence requires great intellectual property rights to achieve sustainable growth of artificial intelligence. Without great human-created data, artificial intelligence models will not be able to train and improve themselves,” Li said.
Not many startups are designing technology specifically to combat AI theft of intellectual property rights.
A project at the University of Chicago called glazea free app for artists to combat the theft of their intellectual property by AI tools, a technology that makes subtle changes to artworks designed to disrupt AI models that read the artwork’s data and imitate the artwork and its artist’s style ability.
Founded in 2022, Story plans to use the new funding to build out its IP network infrastructure and attract more development partners. The company already has more than 200 developers using its platform to create content using programmable IP.
Lee added: “There’s a huge, amazing digital renaissance that makes everyone a creator or a studio, but at the same time, if no one is really compensating and really monetizing the IP, in the long run , which is suicidal behavior for artificial intelligence.
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