How would you prefer to earn cash whereas watching TV? Rumian 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 in the present day 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, determine actors and outfits on display, or obtain real-time reality checks throughout heated political debates — all powered by AI.
“Rumi sits on the reducing fringe of AI brokers, shopper media and decentralized infrastructure,” mentioned Salvador Gala, cofounder of EV3, in a press release. “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
Rumi has raised $4.7 million.
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 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 mentioned.
“AI could make storytelling really immersive — nevertheless it first wants to grasp the world’s content material and tradition to take action,” mentioned Niko Cunningham, CEO of Rumi, in a press release. “Rumi is constructing that infrastructure and giving customers a method to be a part of it from day one.”
This decentralized indexing system helps AI brokers ship smarter insights and customized options resembling 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 get together AI brokers, builders, and creators, offering brokers model new performance and monetization alternatives. These alternatives embody contextual adverts which, from the viewer’s perspective, might 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 vogue 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.iowho 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 knowledge and content material analytics.
Rumi is now welcoming early customers to its watch-to-earn beta, permitting individuals 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 complete forged and crew, commentators, purchasing assistants, fact-checkers, researchers, and writers in your lounge — sitting in your sofa with you as you watch your favourite films, 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 deliver 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 planet’s tales — not simply paperwork and information like in the present day’s present LLMs.
The corporate is constructing infrastructure to assist Dwell TV / sports activities (vs historic content material which can 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
Rumi indexes movies and affords rewards to viewers.
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 effective as a result of it empowers the subsequent era of AI brokers that may determine and deeply perceive content material, offering them the power to enhance and personalize content material for you, and switch passive media into interactive expertise.
The viewership analytics knowledge that we’re amassing on how folks 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 mentioned it is going to 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 folks — tales, characters, objects.
Rumi mentioned it is going to increase advertisers’ return-on-investment by enabling contextual, agentic adverts, which can be extra customized and priceless to shopper, and really feel seamless, natural — embedded within the pure dialog move… adverts that don’t really feel like adverts. After all, folks need to comply with the privateness insurance policies of the corporate.
So far as the target market goes, Rumi mentioned anybody with a pc and entry to streaming platforms can be a part of our community in the present day 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 sources, resembling compute energy or bandwidth, in alternate for factors or tokens.
Rival corporations
There are a number of decentralized networks paying folks for his or her compute sources to coach AI fashions or run inference, resembling Bittensor, Akash, or Render.
Nonetheless, Rumi mentioned 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 knowledge and analytics to media corporations, advertisers, AI Labs, and different events interested by 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 mentioned it’s by no means storing, rebroadcasting nor exposing any precise IP-protected content material. Its decentralized community is indexing it in related vogue that Google listed internet pages.
The corporate mentioned it is going to by no means practice 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, through which they’ll 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 honest 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 assessment was partially upheld as honest use.
Rumi’s community of indexers transcribes content material, nevertheless 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 mentioned this opens countless 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 tendencies are converging that make Rumi viable in the present day?
Shoppers need extra interactive, linked, customized and immersive leisure. It’s clear trying on the progress of gaming, social media, and the large second screening development: 80% of Gen Zs report continuously 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 instances 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 system, contribute to extra immersive and customized way forward for media, and earn whereas doing that, Rumi mentioned.
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