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 as we speak 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 help 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, determine actors and outfits on display, or obtain real-time truth checks throughout heated political debates — all powered by AI.
“Rumi sits on the reducing fringe of AI brokers, client media and decentralized infrastructure,” stated Salvador Gala, cofounder of EV3, in an announcement. “Their method to indexing audio and video content material by way of a distributed community of AI-powered nodes empowers customers to immediately profit from present behaviors.”
Streaming meets incomes
With customers spending greater than 5 hours a day watching content material — usually whereas multitasking — Rumi permits them to earn passive revenue by contributing spare compute to construct the world’s richest information base on video content material that in flip permits AI brokers to deeply perceive and increase media in methods we are able to’t even think about but, the corporate stated.
“AI could make storytelling really immersive — however it first wants to grasp the world’s content material and tradition to take action,” stated Niko Cunningham, CEO of Rumi, in an announcement. “Rumi is constructing that infrastructure and giving customers a solution to be a part of it from day one.”
This decentralized indexing system helps AI brokers ship smarter insights and customized options equivalent 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 occasion AI brokers, builders, and creators, offering brokers model new performance and monetization alternatives. These alternatives embrace contextual advertisements which, from the viewer’s perspective, may be seamlessly built-in within the dialog with AI brokers, and way more value-adding. Brokers can organically floor recipe playing cards throughout cooking exhibits or trend hyperlinks tied to what characters are sporting on the display.
Rumi can be constructing a “decentralized Nielsen,” providing real-time analytics and viewers insights. Early partnerships embrace Virtuals.io, who will combine Rumi’s APIs to offer brokers utilizing their platform media contextual-awareness and interactivity capabilities, along with TVision and Story Protocol who will depend on Rumi to offer distinctive viewership knowledge 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. Enroll at https://www.rumilabs.io.
How Rumi works
Infrastructure permitting AI to grasp human tales and tradition locked in billions of hours of video.
Think about having a whole forged and crew, commentators, buying assistants, fact-checkers, researchers, and writers in your lounge — sitting in your sofa with you as you watch your favourite motion pictures, exhibits, sports activities, information. That’s media contextually-aware AI. To allow that future, the corporate constructed a decentralized community of indexers analyzing content material as they watch, and getting compensated for his or her work and compute.
Over time, the corporate plans to make use of the cash to carry to market the world’s finest AI structure for distilling the story from video: relations between actions, characters, objects; story / character arcs — mapping, understanding and AI collaborating on this planet’s tales — not simply paperwork and information like as we speak’s present LLMs.
The corporate is constructing infrastructure to help Reside TV / sports activities (vs historic content material which are protecting now) and to construct a brand-new gateway to media, D2C app — first ever AI distant and media companion.
How the “watch-to-earn” mannequin works
Customers receives a commission for his or her compute and knowledge contributions. They’re offering worth by analyzing video content material and interacting with it on their machines.
That knowledge is efficacious as a result of it empowers the following era of AI brokers that may determine and deeply perceive content material, offering them the flexibility to enhance and personalize content material for you, and switch passive media into interactive expertise.
The viewership analytics knowledge that we’re accumulating 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’s going to assist particular person creators and Hollywood studios enhance high quality of storytelling, as Rumi is accumulating the richest and most granular trove of knowledge on what resonates with individuals — tales, characters, objects.
Rumi stated it’s going to increase advertisers’ return-on-investment by enabling contextual, agentic advertisements, which are extra customized and precious to client, and really feel seamless, natural — embedded within the pure dialog stream… advertisements that don’t really feel like advertisements. In fact, individuals should comply with the privateness insurance policies of the corporate.
So far as the target market goes, Rumi stated anybody with a pc and entry to streaming platforms can be part of our community as we speak and get rewarded for his or her contributions to enabling the AI-powered Media future. The corporate is primarily centered on Web3 customers, as they’re used to the mannequin of sharing their spare sources, equivalent to compute energy or bandwidth, in trade for factors or tokens.
Rival firms
There are a couple of decentralized networks paying individuals for his or her compute sources to coach AI fashions or run inference, equivalent to Bittensor, Akash, or Render.
Nevertheless, Rumi stated it’s centered on video understanding and have constructed its proprietary deep studying fashions and architectures that enable it to distill the essence of the story from the video, which Rumi believes can be crucial for AI to really perceive the tales people care about and the way they connect with our tradition, increase in the direction of extra human AI.
Rumi makes cash by offering media contextual consciousness to AI Brokers, permitting them to develop into far more than easy bots on social media. Rumi prices them for accessing its APIs and serve their finish customers contextual Advertisements.
It’s additionally promoting viewership knowledge and analytics to media firms, advertisers, AI Labs, and different events fascinated about understanding how shoppers 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 related trend that Google listed internet pages.
The corporate stated it’s going to by no means prepare any AI fashions on that IP-protected content material. It’s constructing infrastructure that advantages IP homeowners: Rumi offers them a model new direct channel of communication with their audiences, by way of which they’ll deepen the patron 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 total books was dominated transformative. And the identical held in TVEyes v. Fox, the place indexing and repurposing broadcast content material for search and evaluate 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 limitless alternatives for creators to make their content material extra customized and interactive, so it in the end advantages the IP homeowners, as they direct channels of communication with their audiences, which they’ll monetize.
Why now? What macro traits are converging that make Rumi viable as we speak?
Shoppers need extra interactive, linked, customized and immersive leisure. It’s clear wanting on the development of gaming, social media, and the huge second screening pattern: 80% of Gen Zs report consistently scrolling by way of their telephones whereas watching TV.
Client AI brokers are about to increase, however they won’t begin with excessive stakes use circumstances like planning and paying in your trip. They’ll begin in your lounge, making your leisure extra immersive, linked 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.