Sky News reports that Human Native AI is set to announce a £2.8 million funding round this week in a bid to give content owners more control over how their work is used in the rapidly changing AI landscape.
An early backer of London Stock Exchange-listed foreign exchange app Transferwise is investing in an artificial intelligence startup that aims to give rights holders more control over how their copyrighted material is used.
Sky News understands Human Native AI will announce this week that it has secured nearly £3 million from investors led by LocalGlobe and Mercuri.
The new funding will be used to help build out the headcount and marketing capabilities of the London-based company, which launched in April.
It was founded by James Smith and Jack Galilee.
Human Native AI, which already has clients including Mumsnet and Daily Mirror publisher Reach, runs a marketplace where rights holders can license data that AI developers can use to train their models.
After signing up to the platform, data owners can choose who uses their data and for what purposes.
The launch of Human Native AI comes amid growing controversy over AI companies using content to train systems such as large-scale language models, which is becoming a growing challenge as generative AI evolves at breakneck speed.
The current situation consists of a patchwork of court battles, separate partnerships, and lengthy opt-out legal procedures that are cumbersome and difficult to implement.
“High-quality data is essential to advances in AI, and we need to make it easier for AI developers to obtain data fairly and responsibly,” Smith said.
“We developed Human Native AI to expand on the time-consuming license negotiations that are currently conducted on a case-by-case basis, and to give rights holders more control and fair compensation.”
The funding round is expected to be announced on Tuesday.
“Companies developing AI products need access to high-quality data to train their models,” said Ziv Reichert, partner at LocalGlobe.
“Individual, case-by-case licensing agreements are not feasible, and the scraping and subsequent cleaning of data is not sustainable.
“The Human Native AI Marketplace provides a rich data environment for AI developers while protecting intellectual property rights and ensuring fair competition and participation in the AI industry.”
