As artificial intelligence creates recent problems with mental property theft, a San Francisco-based startup Story Protocol raised $80 million in Series B funding to try to resolve a growing problem.
He led the recent round Andreessen Horowitzwith the participation of Multi-chain and others. Founded in 2022, Story has raised $140 million to this point, in accordance with company data. The recent round apparently values the company at $2.25 billion.
Intellectual property theft is nothing recent, but advances in artificial intelligence have raised the stakes as generative AI models ingest copyrighted material—without permission—to coach and learn.
The Story blockchain network allows IP owners to store their IP on the platform, embedding the terms of use—equivalent to licensing fees—in smart contracts. Essentially, the blockchain goals to be certain that owners are compensated when their IP is used.
“Big tech companies are stealing intellectual property without consent and pocketing all the profits,” he said SY Leeco-founder of Story. “First, they will gobble up your IP for their AI models without any compensation. … The current state of AI completely destroys the incentive to create original IP for all of us.”
Battle for IP
The announcement of the funding award got here just one day after OpenAI announced the conclusion of a partnership agreement with Conde Nast to display content from various publications it owns, as AI corporations face resistance from many media corporations whose content they eat.
Last 12 months, OpenAI and its largest sponsor, MicrosoftThey were sued by New York Times in copyright matters referring to the use of the newspaper’s mental property.
Other startups and media corporations have also entered into partnerships to permit AI models to make use of their content to learn, as content producers seek to advertise their mental property.