It seems likely that not a week will go by in 2024 without a media organization, author group, or artist suing a generative AI company for using their work to train models without their permission.
The problem, of course, is that there is as yet no clear framework for what constitutes copyright infringement in the context of GenAI training.
While these lawsuits are sure to keep copyright lawyers busy, a new company, Created by Humans, which emerged from stealth on Tuesday, aims to avoid 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 that has morphed into a digital book and news subscription company.
Adler's grand vision has attracted $5 million in funding from notable investors. The round was led by David Sachs, co-host of the All In podcast and founder of Craft Ventures, and Mike Maples, co-founder of Floodgate Fund. Other investors in the round include Jason Calacanis of LAUNCH Fund, Sam Lessin of Slow Ventures, and Garry Tan. Best-selling author Walter Isaacson also invested and joined the company as a creative advisor and as the first author whose work can be licensed by AI companies.
Created by Humans aims to be a platform where creators of videos, images, music, and even medical data can sell the rights to license their AI training, but given Adler's experience and connections in publishing, the startup is first targeting authors and book publishers.
This isn’t the only startup working on the idea of matching content owners with LLM builders looking for training data: another example is Human Native, founded by a former Google DeepMind engineer.
As for Created by Humans, it's built a product so far: a platform where authors can submit their work and AI companies can buy specific elements with predefined usage rights. But the exact details of the licensing agreements are still evolving. “We're trying to broker a three-way deal between authors, publishers, and the AI industry,” Adler told TechCrunch. “It's complicated, but we're making great progress.”
Currently, Created by Humans advocates for a philosophy called the “Fourth Law,” a set of guidelines for how AI companies can use and train on human-created content. Inspired by sci-fi author Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, the Fourth Law states that humans should have the right to consent to and control how AI uses their work, and should be entitled to compensation (if requested) and credit for their work (if a book is referenced in the work, there should be a purchase link).
“we [the Fourth Law] “This will be the new standard for transactions between AI companies and content owners,” Adler said. “Authors and publishers can submit content and then govern all content according to the Fourth Law.”
Adler expects authors to submit specific works to Created by Humans and specify how those works will be used by AI companies, and once the rights are purchased, Created by Humans will receive a cut of the deal.
For example, Walter Isaacson can choose which rights he wants to license from his book. “He can choose training rights, he can choose reference rights, he can license his voice and the style of his characters, and he can choose which AI companies he wants to license to,” Adler says. “Then Walter gets a dashboard that shows him where his book is being used and how it's generating revenue.”
According to Adler, Created by Humans aims to establish a framework for various licensing rights, from turning books into movie scripts to translating them into different languages in real time. In fact, he thinks “AI revenue” will be the next big thing in the book industry, even surpassing e-books and audiobooks.
“I think this will energize the publishing industry and give people a whole new reason to write books,” Adler said.