How would you wish to earn cash whereas watching TV? Rumi, an AI media firm, has raised $4.7 million in a pre-seed funding spherical to rework passive media with rewards.
Rumi is launching its invite-only beta app at the moment 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 rework streaming into an clever, interactive expertise.
Viewers can chat with characters or professional sports activities athletes about what they’re doing on the display, establish actors and outfits on display, or obtain real-time reality checks throughout heated political debates — all powered by AI.
“Rumi sits on the chopping fringe of AI brokers, client media and decentralized infrastructure,” stated Salvador Gala, cofounder of EV3, in a press release. “Their method to indexing audio and video content material by a distributed community of AI-powered nodes empowers customers to straight profit from current 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 earnings 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 will’t even think about but, the corporate stated.
“AI could make storytelling really immersive — however it first wants to know the world’s content material and tradition to take action,” stated Niko Cunningham, CEO of Rumi, in a press release. “Rumi is constructing that infrastructure and giving customers a option to be a part of it from day one.”
This decentralized indexing system helps AI brokers ship smarter insights and personalised options similar to contextual overlays, real-time cultural context and interactive suggestions, whereas defending consumer privateness and respecting content material IP.
Enterprise mannequin and partnerships
Rumi is licensing infrastructure to 3rd celebration 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 trend hyperlinks tied to what characters are carrying on the display.
Rumi can also be constructing a “decentralized Nielsen,” providing real-time analytics and viewers insights. Early partnerships embody 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 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.
Think about having a whole solid 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 taking part on this planet’s tales — not simply paperwork and information like at the moment’s present LLMs.
The corporate is constructing infrastructure to assist Reside TV / sports activities (vs historic content material which might be masking 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 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 subsequent technology of AI brokers that may establish 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 information that we’re gathering on how individuals work together with content material on the depth by no means reached earlier than, can also 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 gathering 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 adverts, which might be extra personalised and priceless to client, and really feel seamless, natural — embedded within the pure dialog movement… adverts that don’t really feel like adverts. In fact, individuals need to conform to 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 the moment 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, similar to compute energy or bandwidth, in trade for factors or tokens.
Rival firms
There are just a few decentralized networks paying individuals for his or her compute sources to coach AI fashions or run inference, similar to Bittensor, Akash, or Render.
Nonetheless, Rumi stated it’s centered 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 important for AI to actually perceive the tales people care about and the way they hook up with our tradition, build up 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 occupied with 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 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 provides 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 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 personalised and interactive, so it finally 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 at the moment?
Shoppers need extra interactive, linked, personalised and immersive leisure. It’s clear wanting on the development of gaming, social media, and the huge second screening development: 80% of Gen Zs report continually 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 may 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 personalised way forward for media, and earn whereas doing that, Rumi stated.
