circleWhen NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 to protest police brutality and racism, he quickly lost his job and eventually moved on to other lines of media and entertainment. Now he's entered the AI industry, launching an artificial intelligence platform called Lumi in the hopes of helping others get around “gatekeeping.”
The new subscription-based platform aims to give storytellers the tools to create, illustrate, publish and monetize their ideas. The company has raised $4 million in funding led by Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six, and its product went live today, July 24.
In an interview with Time, Kapernick said he sees the project as an extension of his own work. “The vast majority of stories out there never get made. Most people don't have access to publishers or platforms or the ability to get into them, or maybe there's a skills gap that creates a barrier to creation,” Kapernick said. “We're going to see a whole new world of stories and perspectives.”
Kaepernick says the idea for Lumi was born out of the challenges he faced when starting his media company, Ra Vision Media, and his publishing company, Kaepernick Publishing, including “long production times, high costs, and a lack of ownership for creators in their work.” When ChatGPT, Dall-E, and other AI models became mainstream a few years ago, Kaepernick began experimenting with these tools, even trying to use them to create children's books. (Kaepernick writes graphic novels, Changing the Game(Based on my experience last year in high school)
Lumi aims to help independent creators craft stories that combine text and illustrations, like comics, graphic novels, and manga. The platform is “built on a foundational model,” Kaepernick said, though he declined to say which one (meaning large-scale, general-purpose machine learning models like Chat-GPT). Users interact with a chatbot to create characters and build a story by fleshing out their backstories and traits. They then use image-generating tools to depict the characters and their journey. “You can interact with the AI companion to test out ideas,” he said, “like, 'I want a different ending,' or, 'I want to make it more comedic or more dramatic.'”
Users can publish and distribute stories directly on the Lumi platform, order physical copies, and use AI tools to create and sell merchandise based on their IP. Kaepernick hopes the platform will appeal to aspiring creators with gaps in their skill sets, such as athletes who have a story and an audience but no illustration skills, or content creators who struggle to monetize their work.
“We spoke to hundreds of creators and asked them what their concerns were,” he says. “Some were trying to raise funds to launch their projects. Others didn't know how to actually get into the field, didn't have a path, or were rejected. And some creators didn't want to deal with the logistics of fundraising or manufacturing or project management or distribution. We hope this paves the way for people to actually thrive on the creativity they bring to the world.”
read more: Colin Kaepernick on Time Magazine's 2017 Person of the Year shortlist
Kapernick said Lumi gives creators full ownership of the works they create on the platform. When asked how the company would address works created on Lumi that allegedly infringe on existing copyrights, Kapernick said: “We're going to build on the foundational model and let lawmakers and everyone else decide what the laws and standards are.”
Kaepernick is well aware of the deep mistrust and criticism within the creative industries about the rise of AI and its potential to replace jobs. Spike Lee, director of a forthcoming documentary about Kaepernick, for example, said in a February interview that “the danger that AI poses to film is nothing compared to the danger that it poses to the world.” Concerns about AI were also at the heart of last year's Hollywood walkouts.
“I understand the concerns,” Kapernick says. “Creators have to take control. This is another tool to empower creators to create in a better, more effective way, and it gives them the freedom to tell stories they couldn't before.” Kapernick compares these new AI tools to the impact the iPhone had in allowing more people to experiment with photography. “We've seen a whole new world of photography and photography,” he adds. “But that doesn't eliminate traditional photographers and their skills and expertise. We see it the same way.”
Kapernick's team includes former Apple (Stefan Dasbach) and Reflex AI (Sam Fasel) engineers. A Lumi representative declined to disclose the monthly cost of the platform. Creators can start signing up for the beta starting July 24.
