Created by Humans has officially launched its promised AI rights licensing platform for authors. The first iteration of the platform allows for the licensing of AI training rights and reference rights, while a later release will allow for licensing for transformation rights. The launch date for publishers and agents to work with the platform is forthcoming.
The platform allows authors to claim their works via ISBN or direct upload and set licensing preferences. AI companies can then browse and license content through what the company describes as an automated interface. The system currently supports rights for AI model training and reference via Retrieval Augmented Generation models. Created by Humans plans to add licensing for transformative rights in the future.
"Our goal is to make AI licensing simple and transparent so that authors of all sizes can contribute to and profit from AI's use of their work while AI developers can properly reward the humans fueling their technology, without slowing down innovation," said Trip Adler, cofounder and CEO of Created by Humans. "It's very author-centric. We've got a few dozen authors already testing the product. Authors can license all their books, some of their books, or none of their books. We put authors in full control here."
The platform uses the service Plaid to validate an author's identity, and the author must click a check box validating that the given work was, indeed, "created by humans" and no AI was used in the creation of the text. "Part of our promise to AI companies is that all content was created by humans," Adler said. "We want to create a very clean database of human-generated works."
Adler previously served as cofounder of Scribd, which in its earliest iterations was accused of offering unlicensed, pirated works. In contrast, Created by Humans has been working closely with the Authors Guild to ensure that the platform aligns with the author advocacy organization's values and adheres to current copyright laws. Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger is a member of the Created by Humans advisory board.
"We've spent probably six to nine months working on the legal agreement," Adler said. "To date, AI licensing has mostly been happening between big companies with large legal teams. We want to make licensing accessible to anyone in the world. Our partnering with the Authors Guild ensures everything is as human-friendly as possible."
Several notable authors have gone public with their support for the platform, including Walter Isaacson, who serves as an advisor, Susan Orlean, and Douglas Preston, a former president of the Authors Guild. "Created by Humans understands authors in a way no other tech company does," Preston said in a press release announcing the launch. "CbH has established a system that ensures creators retain control of their work and are fairly compensated in this new world of AI."
Created by Humans also announced it has secured an additional $5 million in seed funding, this time coming from Giant Ventures and angel investors including former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, Cruise Automation co-founder Kyle Vogt, Dropbox founder Drew Houston, and Slack cofounder Cal Henderson. This follows a $5 million pre-seed round raised in June 2024 from Floodgate, Slow Ventures, and Craft Ventures, which is run by David Sacks, who has been named the new AI and crypto czar for the forthcoming Trump administration.
Asked what the publishing industry's response to the platform has been so far, Adler replied, "A lot of people in the publishing community are fearful of authors' reactions to AI. And, yes, while there are people who are afraid, there are also people who are really excited about innovation and want to lean into this."
Silicon Valley has had much the same reaction. "I talk to startup founders and developers all the time," Adler said. "They all want to do stuff with copyrighted content and they're all just kind of paralyzed because they're worried about getting sued."
That said, everyone is hoping for a mutually beneficial outcome. "Our goal is to make this really simple, so AI developers can move fast and get the content they need while content owners are on board," Adler said. "If we can clean up all the confusion around copyright in the AI industry, it's going to lead to more innovation and a whole new revenue model for the book industry."
Asked if the company had a projection as to how much money an author could make by licensing their rights, Adler called this "the billion dollar question" of what data is worth in an AI world. He noted that opinions vary widely, with "some people who believe all data should be free" while others believe "human data is the most valuable resource ever."
Rather than providing specific numbers, Adler said that determining market pricing for this kind of data was something the company would need to figure out. While he predicted the opportunity could be "bigger than ebooks, bigger than audiobooks," he emphasized that they are first focused on building the infrastructure to allow market pricing to form naturally. The platform currently indicates relative "earnings potential" that fluctuates based on how many rights an author chooses to license, but no specific dollar amounts have been established.
