Star athlete and former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick is not any stranger to the cutthroat world of media. After being blackballed by the NFL for protesting police violence towards Black communities, he’s grow to be a civil rights activist, which has knowledgeable the companies he’s based.
In 2020, he began Kaepernick Publishing to emphasise minority voices and, earlier this week, he debuted Lumi AI, which makes use of synthetic intelligence to assist creators take their story concepts and switch them into merchandise that they’ll promote. The corporate is at the moment targeted on serving to creators develop comics and graphic novels, and distributing them.
Lumi, which has snagged $4 million in seed funding led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s enterprise capital agency Seven Seven Six, is a month-to-month subscription service of AI instruments for comics creation.
Lumi will take a minimize from gross sales, and creators will retain the rights to their work.
Associated video
We’re slightly greater than midway by way of 2024, however the AI market has already had a wild yr, attracting elevated investments in Q2 and skyrocketing to $24 billion, greater than doubling from the earlier quarter, in response to Reuters.
Nonetheless, this swift growth has sparked rigidity inside artistic communities, many fearing that widespread job loss is imminent.
Kaepernick spoke with ADWEEK about his imaginative and prescient for integrating creators.
This interview has been edited for readability and brevity.
ADWEEK: What enterprise issues do you remedy?
Kaepernick: We’re targeted on serving to creators go from an thought to a closing product, and we’re beginning with comics, graphic novels and manga. So, taking that concept right into a completed digital product, we additionally do the bodily distribution for them, in addition to assist them merchandise all on one platform.
The opposite half that’s vital is creators personal all of the IP that they create. Loads of the learnings and obstacles we’re fixing for is what I discovered by way of 5 years of constructing a publishing firm and 10 years of constructing a media firm, and I need to take away that barrier by creating entry and alternative for creators.
How do you intend to make use of the $4 million raised, and do you intend to rent extra individuals?
