Trip Adler, formerly of Scribd, speaks at Frankfurter Buchmesse’s Publishing Perspectives Forum about the new AI-licensing platform he has co-founded with Jen Singerman and Edward Igushev, ‘Created by Humans.’ Image: Publishing Perspectives, Johannes Minkus
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Douglas Preston: ‘Safeguarding American Creativity’
Today’s opening to the public (January 14) of the Created by Humans rights platform is something Publishing Perspectives readers have been familiar with since our interview in July with co-founders Trip Adler and Jen Singerman, which was followed by an onstage conversation at Frankfurter Buchmesse in our Publishing Perspectives Forum in October.
As the program has positioned itself, it opens today as the official artificial intelligence licensing partner of the United States’ 14,000-member Authors Guild, led by Mary Rasenberger, who has become member of the company’s advisory board. That partnership, arranged in October, is a clear signal that the ability of this new service to protect published text against unlicensed usage by generative AI programs is dependent on the buy-in of a substantial number of authors.
Jen Singerman
Many know Adler and Singerman from their years with their previous entrepreneurial success, the international content subscription service Scribd, and Adler’s trademark upbeat bearing is in place for this new venture, as well in an interview after his appearance onstage last week at New York University’s Advanced Publishing Institute.
And along with the opening of the platform itself, the company is now unveiling the proprietary framework they’ve developed, AI Rights, which is at the core of the service, currently offering rights for AI model training and reference via RAG models. Adler says the team has plans to add more rights soon to the framework.
“We’ve raised more funding,” he says. “The product is great shape. It’s really pretty polished and looking really good.
“And we’ve got a number of big-name authors on board, and we’re going to get going.”
Indeed, in the run-up to its launch today, Created by Humans has seen a flurry of new interest from some major names to add to some of the higher-profile authors already engaged.
As you may remember, Walter Isaacson (he’s featured in a promotional video below) has been onboard from the outset as “founding author.” Douglas Preston—a much-respected former president of the Authors Guild—now also appears on the company’s roster as a second founding author and he’s adamant about his support for the approach the company is taking.
Douglas Preston
“Created by Humans understands authors in a way no other tech company does,” Preston says in a comment endorsing the program. The company, he says, “has established a system that ensures that creators retain control of their work and are fairly compensated in this new world of AI.
“What they’re doing goes beyond business; they’re safeguarding American creativity.”
And Isaacson and Preston now are being joined by influential players in the author corps including James Patterson, Susan Orlean, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Sylvia Day, Hampton Sides, Tad Friend, Nathaniel Rich, Mimi Swartz, Kim Scott, Nicholas Thompson, Danielle Trussoni, Elizabeth Weil, Deborah Jackson Taffa, Eric Alterman, Bruce Barcott, Steven Kotler, Florence Williams, Susan Orlean, Kim Scott, and Tad Friend.
US$5 Million in Seed Funding
In a demonstration of how well connected and regarded the Palo Alto-raised Adler is, he arrives today with US$5 million in seed funding, from Giant Ventures and angel investors including Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch; Kyle Vogt, co-founder of Cruise Automation; Drew Houston, the founding CEO of Dropbox; and Cal Henderson, a co-founder of Slack.
Jon Dishotsky
Jon Dishotsky, a partner at Giant Ventures—which has presence in London, Los Angeles, and Copenhagen—captures the kind of respect that Adler and his team bring to Created by Humans, the investment community’s analog to the big-name authors who are lining up to support the launch.
“Trip pioneered digital publishing at Scribd” in its 2007 creation, Dishotsky says, “and now he and his stellar team are redefining the relationship between creators and AI.
“By giving control back to authors, this platform isn’t just creating a new revenue model—it’s protecting creativity, original thought, and fair compensation, ensuring that human artistry continues to thrive in the AI era.”
The new round follows a US$5 million pre-seed round raised in June from Craft Ventures, Floodgate, Slow Ventures, Garry Tan, and others.
Trip Adler: ‘We Believe the Authors Have a Key’
From the library section of the Created by Humans site, a demonstration of bundled content to be made available to AI systems for licensed usage as registered by authors. Image: Created by Humans
One of the things you can see at the Created by Humans site, is a glimpse of one way licensed content will be offered to systems for training purposes. The library section of the site reflects content bundled by genres, by sales positions (bestsellers, reference, nonfiction, fiction), and more. This is a look at how Created by Humans expects to license books made available to the service by their authors.
“At the end of the day, we believe the authors have a key. They’re the primary owners of their AI rights. That’s why we’re we want the authors to sign up directly.”Trip Adler, Created by Humans
In his earlier interview from the summer with us, Adler mentioned that, “The big companies like OpenAI and Apple and Google and others are our potential buyers. We’ve talked to all of them, they’re quite interested.
“And then there’s also there’s also the long tail, he said. “We’ve talked to a lot of start-ups that are interested in this. Universities are interested in this. There really could be hundreds of buyers at this point.”
The plan now is for Created by Humans to move forward, amassing material to attract AI companies ready to “browse and license content through a sleek, intuitive interface.”
And that starts with the gathering of copyrighted content from authors who “create an account and verify their identity, claim their works by ISBN number or by uploading a work, and then set their licensing preferences within the platform.
“Created by Humans manages content curation, file delivery, licensing, and payments.”
While major media companies have engaged in AI licensing, the Created by Humans intent is to offer these capabilities to authors, whose clout in the marketplace of AI licensing will be established by the company’s ability to create bundled content.
“At the end of the day,” Adler says, you know, we believe the authors have a key. They’re the primary owners of their AI rights. So we need to build a platform that allows them to directly sign up and manage and license their AI rights. That’s why we’re we want the authors to sign up directly.”
Adler says he also expects that many authors will want their agents to get their clients’ content into the program, and this is being built into the functionality.
“I think authors want their agents do this for them,” Trip Adler says. “There will be cases where agents do it on behalf of their authors. But in general, though, we’re going directly to authors or representatives of the authors” to keep AI rights control in the hands of the writers.
Below is a promotional video produced by Created by Humans released to time with today’s launch.
More from Publishing Perspectives on artificial intelligence and publishing is here, more Scribd and Trip Adler’s work is here, and more on copyright issues in publishing is here.
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