Story, a blockchain network that tracks intellectual property ownership, today announced a collaboration with artificial intelligence model developer Stability AI Ltd. that will allow contributors – creators, developers and artists – to address the challenge of attributing, tracking and making money from creative work generated through AI.

Originally named Story Protocol, Story has raised over $140 million to build a blockchain network to track intellectual property. IP can represent anything made by people, not just well-known creative projects such as movies or music playing on the radio. It includes artwork, images, music, writing or any creative work done by human hands that goes into the training and fine-tuning of AI models.

Story uses blockchain technology to attribute what it calls “intangible assets” so that they can be tracked and controlled wherever they are used in the AI ecosystem. Blockchain technology works using massively distributed databases that record transactions and cryptography to secure data. That makes it very difficult to counterfeit and also makes it possible to track historical changes.

The company said it’s possible to use this to attribute and license IP for creative works that are used with AI models and applications, including revenue streams for derivative works and agreements written onto the blockchain.

Stability AI is the developer of the leading open-source Stable Diffusion foundation AI image generator model family, as well as video, audio and others. The company recently released its most recent state-of-the-art foundation text-to-image generator AI model batch in October with Stable Diffusion 3.5.

“The combination of AI and blockchain is not only incredibly powerful, but necessary. Blockchains secure digital property rights in the era of AI-driven creative abundance,” said Jason Zhao, co-founder and chief protocol officer at PIP Labs, Story’s initial core contributor. “By leveraging Stability AI’s technology and Story’s technology, we’re showcasing how the proper incentive structures can ensure attribution and empower creators, driving AI development forward.”

Story will use Stability AI’s foundation image generation models to build AI applications that embed tracking and attribution capabilities through the AI lifecycle. That will allow for licensing and revenue compensation for creators involved, the company said.

The attribution and licensing of creative works used in the training and fine-tuning of AI models has long been a sticking point for artists and creative workers for some time now. Generative AI models such as DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion require human-made creative artwork and images to generate their vivid, imaginative displays from text prompts. Professionals have decried the use of copyrighted works to train models as theft.

Story says through its platform, artists and creators will have this control and attribution of their works. That should enable them to be more secure and their licensing more certain throughout the AI stack. Using the historical tracking capability of blockchain technology, creators will be able to safeguard their IP’s provenance in the digital era in the same way that real-world art dealers track the origin of artwork.

Two projects already being built using Story’s platform and Stability AI’s foundation models include Maojin and ABLO. Mahojin is a search-to-generate AI remixing platform, and ABLO is a collaborative AI platform that helps users design physical goods with merchandise brands.

Image: Story