How would you prefer to earn cash whereas watching TV? Rumi, an AI media firm, has raised $4.7 million in a pre-seed funding spherical to remodel passive media with rewards.
Rumi is launching its invite-only beta app at this time and it goals to permits customers to have interaction with media content material in actual time.
The spherical, co-led by A16z crypto CSX and EV3, will assist Rumi’s mission to construct the primary decentralized AI infrastructure for media, combining cutting-edge synthetic intelligence with user-powered indexing to remodel streaming into an clever, interactive expertise.
Viewers can chat with characters or professional sports activities athletes about what they’re doing on the display screen, establish actors and outfits on display screen, or obtain real-time reality checks throughout heated political debates — all powered by AI.
“Rumi sits at the cutting edge of AI agents, consumer media and decentralized infrastructure,” stated Salvador Gala, cofounder of EV3, in a press release. “Their approach to indexing audio and video content through a distributed network of AI-powered nodes empowers users to directly benefit from existing behaviors.”
Streaming meets incomes
Rumi has raised $4.7 million.
With customers spending greater than 5 hours a day watching content material — typically whereas multitasking — Rumi permits them to earn passive revenue by contributing spare compute to construct the world’s richest data base on video content material that in flip permits AI brokers to deeply perceive and increase media in methods we will’t even think about but, the corporate stated.
“AI can make storytelling truly immersive — but it first needs to understand the world’s content and culture to do so,” stated Niko Cunningham, CEO of Rumi, in a press release. “Rumi is building that infrastructure and giving users a way to be part of it from day one.”
This decentralized indexing system helps AI brokers ship smarter insights and customized options corresponding to contextual overlays, real-time cultural context and interactive suggestions, whereas defending person privateness and respecting content material IP.
Enterprise mannequin and partnerships
Rumi is licensing infrastructure to 3rd social gathering AI brokers, builders, and creators, offering brokers model new performance and monetization alternatives. These alternatives embody contextual adverts which, from the viewer’s perspective, will be seamlessly built-in within the dialog with AI brokers, and rather more value-adding. Brokers can organically floor recipe playing cards throughout cooking exhibits or style hyperlinks tied to what characters are carrying on the display screen.
Rumi can be constructing a “decentralized Nielsen,” providing real-time analytics and viewers insights. Early partnerships embody Virtuals.io, who will combine Rumi’s APIs to supply brokers utilizing their platform media contextual-awareness and interactivity capabilities, along with TVision and Story Protocol who will depend on Rumi to supply distinctive viewership information and content material analytics.
Rumi is now welcoming early customers to its watch-to-earn beta, permitting contributors to assist construct what it calls the primary clever, user-powered media ecosystem. Join at https://www.rumilabs.io.
How Rumi works
Infrastructure permitting AI to know human tales and tradition locked in billions of hours of video.
Over time, the corporate plans to make use of the cash to convey to market the world’s greatest AI structure for distilling the story from video: relations between actions, characters, objects; story / character arcs — mapping, understanding and AI taking part on the earth’s tales — not simply paperwork and information like at this time’s present LLMs.
The corporate is constructing infrastructure to assist Dwell TV / sports activities (vs historic content material which are protecting now) and to construct a model new gateway to media, D2C app — first ever AI distant and media companion.
How the “watch-to-earn” mannequin works
Rumi indexes movies and gives rewards to viewers.
Customers receives a commission for his or her compute and information contributions. They’re offering worth by analyzing video content material and interacting with it on their machines.
That information is efficacious as a result of it empowers the following technology of AI brokers that may establish and deeply perceive content material, offering them the flexibility to reinforce and personalize content material for you, and switch passive media into interactive expertise.
The viewership analytics information that we’re amassing on how individuals work together with content material on the depth by no means reached earlier than, can be used to enhance content material and promoting high quality.
The corporate stated it can assist particular person creators and Hollywood studios enhance high quality of storytelling, as Rumi is amassing the richest and most granular trove of information on what resonates with individuals — tales, characters, objects.
Rumi stated it can increase advertisers’ return-on-investment by enabling contextual, agentic adverts, which are extra customized and invaluable to client, and really feel seamless, natural — embedded within the pure dialog circulate… adverts that don’t really feel like adverts. After all, individuals need to comply with the privateness insurance policies of the corporate.
So far as the audience goes, Rumi stated anybody with a pc and entry to streaming platforms can be a part of our community at this time, and get rewarded for his or her contributions to enabling the AI-powered Media future. The corporate is primarily targeted on Web3 customers, as they’re used to the mannequin of sharing their spare assets, corresponding to compute energy or bandwidth, in alternate for factors or tokens.
Rival firms
There are a couple of decentralized networks paying individuals for his or her compute assets to coach AI fashions or run inference, corresponding to Bittensor, Akash, or Render.
Nonetheless, Rumi stated it’s targeted on video understanding, and have constructed its proprietary deep studying fashions and architectures that permit it to distill the essence of the story from the video, which Rumi believes will likely be essential for AI to actually perceive the tales people care about and the way they connect with our tradition, increase in direction of extra human AI.
Rumi makes cash by offering media contextual consciousness to AI Brokers, permitting them to turn out to be far more than easy bots on social media. Rumi costs them for accessing its APIs, and serve their finish customers contextual Advertisements.
It’s additionally promoting viewership information and analytics to media firms, advertisers, AI Labs, and different events curious about understanding how customers work together with content material (on which they spend maybe 5 hours a day).
Content material licensing and rights administration insurance policies for AI
Rumi stated it’s by no means storing, rebroadcasting nor exposing any precise IP-protected content material. Its decentralized community is indexing it in comparable style that Google listed internet pages.
The corporate stated it can by no means practice any AI fashions on that IP-protected content material. It’s constructing infrastructure that advantages IP house owners: Rumi provides them a model new direct channel of communication with their audiences, through which they will deepen the buyer engagement in methods unimaginable earlier than, and entry new monetization alternatives.
Courts have repeatedly upheld that publishing granular transcriptions or summaries of video content material qualify as truthful use—as seen in Google Books (Authors Guild v. Google), the place digitizing and displaying searchable snippets of complete books was dominated transformative. And the identical held in TVEyes v. Fox, the place indexing and repurposing broadcast content material for search and assessment was partially upheld as truthful use.
Rumi’s community of indexers transcribes content material, however it doesn’t publish it to the general public. Rumi’s protocol solely exposes APIs to permit AI Brokers to work together with that transcript and content material fingerprint, immediate by immediate.
Rumi stated this opens countless alternatives for creators to make their content material extra customized and interactive, so it finally advantages the IP house owners, as they direct channels of communication with their audiences, which they will monetize.
Why now? What macro developments are converging that make Rumi viable at this time?
Shoppers need extra interactive, related, customized and immersive leisure. It’s clear wanting on the progress of gaming, social media, and the large second screening pattern: 80% of Gen Zs report consistently scrolling by their telephones whereas watching TV.
Client AI brokers are about to increase, however they won’t begin with excessive stakes use instances like planning and paying in your trip. They are going to begin in your front room, making your leisure extra immersive, related and academic. Tech is lastly prepared, and anybody can analyze content material on their machine, contribute to extra immersive and customized way forward for media, and earn whereas doing that, Rumi stated.
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