AI Companies Want Digital Content to Train Their Models. RHEI's New Platform Lets Creators License It to Them.

The creator-focused media and technology company formerly known as BBTV has rebranded as RHEI and announced the launch of RHEI Data Pro, a data monetization platform that can help creators earn up to $100,000 for every 1,000 hours of content they have produced.

How? By licensing that content to companies building generative AI models.

Shahrzad Rafati, founder and CEO of RHEI, said Data Pro is launching with more than $35 million in ongoing partnerships with companies working in artificial intelligence, and that “a large number of creators have already taken part in the project, both existing creators we’ve worked with before and new ones.”

The rapid development of generative AI over the past couple of years has made creators worry that models built by big players such as OpenAI may have been trained on their content without their consent.

Rafati says RHEI recognizes these concerns and sees generative AI as an important way to monetize creators, provided creators can control who uses their content and receive appropriate compensation for it.

“RHEI aims to ensure creators can actively take part in the development of AI while being guaranteed fair compensation when their content and data fuel innovation,” Rafati says. “The growing link between AI and human creativity is very exciting, and we built RHEI Data Pro to create new income paths for creators based on the years of work they have already put into their craft.”

RHEI only works with companies that train their models on data provided with consent, and Data Pro is a way for creators of any size to give that consent.

“In the end, the platform won’t work directly with someone who has 5,000 hours of content or 200 hours of content,” Rafati says. “So for us, one of the most important points here is that we make this accessible to any creator, regardless of size. If you have 500 good hours of fishing, that is as valuable as someone who may have 10,000 hours or 200,000 hours of content. It gives an opportunity to smaller creators.”

RHEI does not yet disclose which companies it works with, but Rafati calls them “trillion-dollar technology enterprises.” There are only 10 public companies worth a trillion dollars in the world, and among them are Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet (YouTube’s parent company), Apple, Meta and Tesla.

According to Rafati, these companies are only the beginning. “We believe this will be a truly ongoing source of income for content creators, because we’re looking not only at foundation models, we’re looking at every technology company and application that will use their data for training purposes,” she explains.

When a creator decides to license their content to one (or several) of RHEI Data Pro’s AI partners, RHEI has a “large data team” that steps in, Rafati says. The team takes the creator’s videos, packages them, makes sure they are “supplemented with the right metadata” and then sends them to the partner. The creator is largely uninvolved in the service: they give consent and then receive a fixed rate per hour of licensed content. They also keep all ownership rights to their videos.

In exchange for providing Data Pro and packaging the videos, RHEI takes a portion of the fixed rate the AI company pays the creator. It does not publicly disclose what that portion is.

Over the years RHEI has made several strategic pivots, including a period when it was the largest multi-channel network on the internet. Data Pro is the first development in what Rafati calls the next evolution of RHEI, “a pioneer in the symbiosis between technology and human creativity.”

Lewis Ball, RHEI’s chief strategy and product officer, adds that RHEI sees an opportunity to “redefine the role of data, turning it into a profitable source of income for creators and content owners.”

“We are no longer in the creator economy,” Rafati says. “It is what we call the ‘era of augmented creativity,’ because it is truly a collaboration between AI and creators.”

RHEI says it already has 5 petabytes of content available for AI companies to use in training. Creators and content owners interested in adding their content to the pool can apply for Data Pro here: datapro.rhei.com. The English landing page is here.