In 2024, it seems not a week goes by without a media organization, group of writers, or artist suing AI companies for using their work to train models without a license.
The issue is, of course, that there is still no clear framework for what constitutes copyright infringement in the context of GenAI training.
While these cases are sure to concern copyright lawyers, It was created by humansa new company that emerged from stealth on Tuesday aims to sidestep costly legal battles by offering a marketplace where creators can license their intellectual property directly to LLMs.
Created by Humans is the brainchild of Trip Adler, the former CEO of Scribd, a document sharing service turned digital book and news subscription company.
Adler’s grand vision has attracted $5 million in funding from a group of distinguished investors. The round was led by All-In podcast co-host and Craft Ventures founder David Sacks and Mike Maples, co-founder of Floodgate Fund. Other investors in the round included Jason Calacanis at LAUNCH Fund, Sam Lessin of Slow Ventures and Garry Tan. Best-selling author Walter Isaacson also invested and joined the company as a creative consultant and inaugural author whose work can be sponsored by AI companies.
Created by Humans aims to be a platform where creators of videos, images, music and even medical data can sell licensing rights for AI training. But given Adler’s experience and connections in the publishing world, the startup is initially starting with a service for authors and book publishers.
This isn’t the only startup tackling the idea of matching content owners and LLM creators looking for training data. Another example is Human Native founded by a former Google DeepMind engineer.
As for Created by Humans, it has so far built one product — a platform that allows authors to submit their work and AI companies to buy specific assets with pre-defined usage rights. However, the exact details of the licensing deal are still being worked out. “We’re trying to make a tripartite agreement between authors, publishers and the AI industry,” Adler told TechCrunch. “It’s complicated, but we’re making great progress.”
Currently, Created by Humans proposes a philosophy called the Fourth Law, a set of guiding principles for how AI companies can use and train on human-created content. Fourth law, inspired by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotsstates that humans should have the right to consent and control how AI uses their work and to be compensated (if requested) and credited for their work (if a book is cited in the result, it will there must be a link to buy it).
“We want [the Fourth Law] to be the new standard for how deals between AI companies and content owners work,” Adler said. “Authors and publishers may contribute their content and manage all their content in accordance with the Fourth Law.”
Adler expects authors to submit some projects to Created by Humans and identify how those projects could be used by AI companies. Once the rights are purchased, Created by Humans will terminate the agreement.
For example, Walter Isaacson can choose the rights he wants to license from his books. “He can choose training rights, reporting rights. He can license his voice style, his characters and choose which AI company he wants to license to,” Adler said. “And then Walter will get a dashboard showing where his books are being used and how he’s making money.”
Created by Humans intends to create a framework for a range of licensing rights from turning a book into a movie script to translating it into another language in real time, Adler said. In fact, he envisions “AI revenue” as the next major force in the book industry, eclipsing even e-books and audiobooks.
“I think this will revitalize the book industry and give a whole new reason to write a book,” Adler said.
