Story Protocol, a blockchain-based IP tracking platform, is partnering with AI startup Ritual to let builders create AI models and track their output on-chain.
Story Protocol raised over $54 million last year from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz and Paris Hilton’s 11:11 media, and is currently still in beta testing on Etheruem.
The first initiative under the new partnership involves MyShell, a generative platform for building AI apps and chatbots. Creators using MyShell can host their models on Ritual and register them as IP assets on Story Protocol, ensuring control over usage, attribution, and revenue sharing.
After raising more than $54 million last year from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz and Paris Hilton’s 11:11 Media, Story Protocol, a blockchain-based platform focused on intellectual property (IP) rights, says it will be used by the crypto-meets – AI startup Ritual that allows builders to create AI models and track their output on-chain.
Under the so-called partnership, Ritual will start putting its user-generated AI models on Story Protocol to “prove that output such as text, image and voice are generated by specific models” and to provide “advanced watermarking schemes that will give developers stronger security guarantees around provenance and traceability,” Story Protocol said in a statement. According to Story Protocol co-founder Jason Zhao, a new software development kit (SDK) is also in the works that will allow Ritual developers to seamlessly register their models as ” IP Assets” on Story Protocol.
Story Protocol bills itself as a “programmable IP layer” that creators can use to track their IP to ensure it is paid for when it is used and allocated appropriately. Story Protocol, which is currently being tested on Ethereum’s Sepolia test network, was catnip for investors last year as its pitch gave blockchain’s code-is-law tenants broad overtures toward Web3 and the maker economy.
The partnership with Ritual, a decentralized computing platform that raised $25 million last year in an effort to help developers build and run AI models, comes at a time when AI conversations are dominating the crypto world, along with the broader technology -industry. Investor money is flowing into AI-linked blockchain projects faster than ever, and a new category of “AI Tokens” has been surging lately with the tech stock of the moment, Nvidia (NVDA).
Working together, the leaders of Ritual and Story Protocol seem hopeful that crossing AI with blockchain-based property rights could offer the crypto industry its surest bet yet to seize the hype surrounding both sectors.
“Although we have brought media on-chain, we have not brought IP on-chain, because IP is rights plus media. It is not just media alone,” said Zhao, who worked as a product manager at Google’s Deep Mind AI. lab before starting Story Protocol. According to Zhao, Story Protocol has introduced “programmable IP” by “allowing people to tie the kind of rules of engagement and the permissions to each piece of IP in the chain, so that it can move across different apps and different platforms.”
With Story Protocol, Zhao says the rules governing how IP should be used and paid for can be hard-coded into smart contracts. Zhao says these contracts can help people create derivative works of IP without fear of infringement and ensure IP holders are automatically compensated for their work when others use it.
“We see ourselves as providing more efficient rails, or infrastructure, for IP licensing than the traditional pen and paper world,” said Zhao.
The first project to benefit from the Ritual-Story collaboration will be MyShell, a generative platform that people can use to build AI apps and chatbots based on made-up characters. MyShell users can host their models on Ritual and then register them as IP assets on Story Protocol.
“By partnering with MyShell, Story Protocol gives creators control over the AI use cases they create, with attribution, permissioned remixes, and revenue sharing all captured on-chain,” Story Protocol said in its statement.