Kaepernick Empowers Creators After Narrative Slips

Colin Kaepernick, ex-NFL quarterback and activist, launches Lumi, an AI storytelling tool, to help creators take control and tell their own stories.

After reading that, I wouldn’t blame you if you thought, “Huh?” But as you can imagine, the former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers is more experienced in this area. First of all, according to Kaepernick, generative AI is just a means to an end; this is a solution for storytellers. Over the last ten years, Kaepernick has been developing his media company, Kaepernick Media, which has exposed him to some of the most pervasive issues facing the media industry. Since 2020, he has also been a board member of Medium. Lumi addresses problems such as creatives losing ownership of their work, manufacturing costs, and gatekeeping. An AI subscription, a distribution platform, and a revenue-sharing scheme are hardly innovative solutions, but their implementation might be.

During the 2016 NFL season, Kaepernick gained notoriety for his passing grade but rather for his protests against the national anthem before football games. Although he was kneeling in protest of civil injustices against Black people, many people saw it as rude. “I don’t necessarily agree with what he’s doing,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell remarked at the time, while other people, including former President Trump, had harsher remarks. Despite leading San Francisco to a Super Bowl a few years prior, Kaepernick struggled to find a new team after departing the 49ers, raising allegations that NFL owners had blackballed him.

“Why should that be the case about my own story – the impact and implications of other people creating their narratives around it and telling it from their perspective?” stated Kaepernick in a TechCrunch interview. In the past, I could have easily stepped out and shared my narrative differently, but I think things through carefully and consider why and how I’m building things. I’m not especially interested in things that are only self-serving or self-centered.

However, Kaepernick sees a chance to give storytellers greater general empowerment via Lumi. While he might publish a narrative on the site himself, there are other ideas than that. Although Kaepernick’s struggles in the media have had a significant influence on his personal life, he is now using the lesson to develop a solution that is bigger than himself.

Lumi is coming out of stealth on Wednesday, backed by $4 million in seed money led by Seven Seven Six. Additionally, creators can register for the company’s beta version right now.

Nice! What, then, is it?

According to Kaepernick, Lumi is an end-to-end media firm that will eventually branch out into video and include publishing, merchandising, creative tools, and a distribution platform. Lumi is launching a limited number of creator tools for manga, a Japanese comic book illustration.

When using Lumi for storytelling, creators start by going to the website. There, you can designate the protagonist of your story by giving an AI model that is text-based detailed information about their past, present, and future selves. This results in the AI creating an image of your character, which illustrators might use as a source of inspiration or the actual image of the character around which a tale can be developed.

After that, Lumi’s AI assists you in plotting your novel by posing queries regarding themes, protagonists and villains, story structure, and script development. The final product page will appear, with the dialogue, images, and subtitles structured into a graphic book. Following publication, a digital version of your story will appear on Lumi’s website home page.

However, Lumi also hopes to facilitate authors’ physical publishing and commerce. Lumi is a one-stop shop for all a creator’s needs, and Kaepernick claims his company will take care of all the business logistics so creators can concentrate on narrative.

Three monthly subscription tiers are available to producers: $20, $40, and $75. The more expensive tiers allow creators to access sophisticated capabilities. Kaepernick desires to give the authors a portion of the money made by these tales as well as tangible copies and merchandise.

The main goal of Keapernick’s strategy is to turn Lumi into a manga enthusiasts’ entertainment hub. Getting a story on Lumi’s website is supposed to have some value, but that only holds if visitors are traveling there.

Accustomed to Silicon Valley

Although Kaepernick is the founder of Lumi, he has been an angel investor since 2017 and said that he has made more than 50 investments overall. Since 2020, Kaepernick has also been on the board of Medium, a platform for digital publication. He claims that working with well-known Silicon Valley investors there, such as fellow board members Ben Horowtiz, Evan Williams, and Mariam Naficy of Heretic Ventures, as well as co-founders of A16Z and Medium, has influenced his insight as a software startup.

“I don’t believe I suddenly decided to start a tech company,” Kaepernick remarked. However, we were attempting to find a solution for the creators we are working with. As it happens, starting a tech firm is our most excellent option to accomplish this.

Given that some prominent figures in Silicon Valley have openly backed Trump, Kaepernick says he isn’t concerned about entering the industry more widely as a founder at this politically sensitive time. As the Know Your Rights Camp director since 2016, Kaepernick has been a civil rights activist for almost ten years. The camp aims to “advance the liberation and well-being of Black and Brown communities.” Kaepernick claims that his only concern with Lumi is the product.

Kaepernick declared, “I don’t have any concerns entering the space now.” “If we provide the greatest service to our creators and end users, we will have a successful business, and everything else will take care of itself.”

Lumi seeks to elevate voices who aren’t currently given enough room to stand. Although Kaepernick’s company will employ a few different fundamental AI models, he is eager to eliminate the prejudices that have long dogged LLMs.

The prejudices of the past will be ingrained in AI models as they currently exist. Kaepernick states, “We’ve seen it, we know that. AI will significantly speed up developments regarding stories and how individuals are portrayed. That has exponentially positive and negative effects. Our goal in creating this is to provide a better future for creators and storytellers.