Technology founder Dan Purcell was devastated to discover that his ex-partner had posted videos of their private, intimate relationships on a porn site without his knowledge. He was determined to come up with a solution to prevent such violations from happening again. His Ceartas startup has now raised a $4.5 million seed round from European VC firm Earlybird and Upside VC, a fund founded by YouTube influencer group The Sidemen.
Ceartas DMCA was founded in 2021 by Purcell (CEO) and Jonny Smith (CTO) to apply AI to brand protection and anti-piracy services for content creators and brands.
This is done by de-indexing content and automatically issuing legal notices for pirated content.
The company leverages its proprietary AI platform to scan digital platforms to identify and remove fraudulent content, including deepfakes.
The platform claims to significantly increase the visibility of problematic content on Google by 98%. It is also said to be able to handle deepfakes.
The company, which is based in Dublin and Berlin, plans to open an office in Los Angeles and currently has partnerships with platforms such as OnlyFans and Fanfix, a content monetization platform for creators.
Over the phone, Purcell told me: “I was dating a girl who was in the tech industry, and she asked me if I wanted to make some personal videos together. About four or five years later, they all leaked out onto the internet,” he says. I finally found it,” he told me. “My girlfriend at the time slid her phone over the counter and gave me the video on the phone. It was pretty bad.”
He looked into useful services, but most of them were aimed at large companies rather than creators.
“There wasn't really anything to help individuals. So, being an engineer, I built something myself…and then a legal copyright notice would be submitted under the DMCA. This is… Here's how we started in 2020: A year later, the content creator economy is booming and the app has taken off.”
He said the service is currently targeted at YouTubers and Instagrammers, but “as we move toward businesses, we plan to promote services that support physical goods such as counterfeit goods.” We leveraged Content Creator to build that model and essentially built the dataset. ”
“Our service is fully automated. We're powered by AI. And if you look at Google's transparency report, which I think was forwarded to you, you'll see: [other platforms] The overall success rate is much lower. Content creators can find themselves in difficult legal situations, as submitting the wrong DMCA notice can get them into trouble.
He added that the company has a provisional patent on the model as it does not rely on third-party technology.
In addition to working with influencers like Sidemen, we also work with physical product brands who put their content on social media.
Purcell said the startup chose to work with Early Bird because it was actively seeking companies in this brand protection space. : “We didn't actually go and sell to them. They actually found us. They've been researching this since 2019. And we scaled it and monetized it. We couldn't find anyone who could. So we pitched them, and they pitched us. They were very technical and data-focused. I felt like I understood the problem because I was there.
Andre Retterath, partner at Earlybird Venture Capital, added in a statement: “Across the media and entertainment industry, individuals and businesses alike are facing unprecedented piracy challenges…Training the latest AI large-scale language models (LLMs) is also unlocking the floodgates for usage and adoption. “Opened'' of unauthorized content. ”
Ceartas is not alone in this space, however. His four main competitors in the brand protection field are:
Rulta is a platform for protecting digital content and brands from piracy, used by Twitch, OnlyFans, Twitter/X, Patreon, and more. BranditScan also offers a similar service.
In the B2B brand protection space, Barcelona-based Red Points raised $106.6 million, and Vobile, a provider of film and TV content services to large enterprises, raised $181.6 million.
All companies that file DMCA notices, especially Google, are publicly identified and scored based on the accuracy of their takedowns. This information is part of a public repository called the Google Transparency Report and Lumen database. Google Web (which does not score image removal) states that Ceartas excludes 90-100% of URLs.
Google's transparency index ranks Rulta at 63%, BranditScan at 54%, Red Points at 31%, and Vobile at 42%.
These numbers suggest that AI-driven approaches are likely to replace older delisting methods in the near future.
Ceartas claims it can automate the delisting process and quickly identify deepfakes.
Purcell said: “We basically built our own dataset using ML. The AI recognizes the context. The AI looks at the page. We use things like optical character recognition to create watermarks, faces, etc. Use recognition and more… See if people leave derogatory or sexual comments. If it's over 90%, we'll automatically send you a legal notice. We will manually review it with a copyright expert…The legal notice will be written by an attorney. We work with a law firm called Morrison Cooper in Los Angeles.
Recent funding rounds include Thomas Hesse (former president of Sony Music), Andrei Henkler (10x founder), Michele Attisani and Niccolo Maisto (Faceit), and Ryan Morrison (Evolved Talent/Morrison).・We are also receiving support from new angels such as Cooper). From the fields of games, content creation, music, and television.