GoKawiilis a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.
Illustrators have spent years sounding the alarm about generative artificial intelligence startups training their models on artists’ work without permission. They’ve pointed out how the practice is tantamount to theft, and in response, many gen AI boosters have argued that it’s necessary for the technology’s evolution. This has led to contentious legal battles, but it’s also given rise to a new wave of AI startups like Pippa that market their services as being more ethical than the competition.
Like most companies selling access to text-to-video models, Pippa’s main product is short bursts of user-generated footage that can be cobbled together to tell visual stories. But what sets Pippa apart from other players in the gen AI video space is the way its business model is designed to pay artists directly. Every time a Pippa subscriber generates an image or a video clip whose style is derived from a human artist’s work, that artist is compensated by the platform.
Pippa’s cofounders, Hogan Shrum and Sean Wright, think that their focus on working with artists is what will attract customers. They also believe that their company will prove that AI firms can generate content ethically. But Pippa faces an uphill battle as it seeks to convince artists. Even as it tries to create an ethical spin on AI video generation, the company is still getting off the ground with the same sloppy models that other text-to-video services offer.
A shot from a video created with Pippa. Image: Pippa
When I recently spoke with Shrum and Wright, they told me that they see Pippa as a way to move forward from “the bloody history that the AI industry has been built on.” The duo want to set an example for their peers and show the public how AI companies don’t necessarily have to steal to make their products work.
“All of these models from the past 18 months have been trained on real people’s art without their permission — that’s how it was built,” Wright said. “I harken it back to when Napster was a thing and everybody was stealing music. But then, Apple came out with the 99-cent song, Napster got shut down, and we figured out a different way to get musical artists paid.”
Pippa’s payments to artists aren’t very large on an individual basis — especially when you compare them to how much the service charges users for monthly subscriptions (which range from $14.99 to $99.99.) The company says that artists receive $0.005 per image and $0.003 per second of video. The more generations a user makes, the larger an artist’s payments become, and Pippa also gives them access to a cut of a 5 percent royalty pool that’s funded by the platform’s overall subscription revenue. In Pippa’s press materials, the company likens its royalty payment structure to Spotify’s — a curious choice given how many artists have spoken out about being shafted by the music streamer.
Pippa’s tech still involves using art that was scraped from the internet
Pippa — which launched in May — currently has around 800 paying subscribers, and while the company has only signed licensing / model training agreements with four human artists, Shrum said they are in talks to bring four more into the fold. Artists interested in working with Pippa must first go through a multi-step vetting process to verify that the illustrations they submit are actually theirs. Once an illustrator is approved, models trained on their art become available to Pippa’s subscribers. Additionally, the service provides artists a profile page, which can be used to direct people to their work outside of the platform. But Wright noted that Pippa also gives its partner artists the option to submit their work under pseudonyms if they are concerned about being seen as “crossing the picket line.”
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