Janice R. Andrews
TollBit, a new company based in New York, wants to become the iTunes of AI content licensing. They are making waves in the world of AI, which is changing very quickly. Olivia Joslin and Toshit Panigrahi, two 28-year-old business owners, started this six-month-old company with the goal of making a market where AI companies can properly pay writers directly for the data they need to train and improve their models. Their goal is clear, but the business plan is still mostly just an idea, since no transactions have happened on the platform yet.
Why AI content is like the wild west
There is a time in the AI business that Joslin and Panigrahi compare to the “Napster days” of digital music. A lot of AI companies today scrape huge amounts of data from the internet without paying the people who own the rights to that data, just like Napster let people steal songs without paying the artists. There have been big court cases over this behavior, but it is still common. It’s like the “Wild West” for TollBit’s founders: AI companies don’t care about content authors’ rights and do business as usual.
Why there needs to be a marketplace for content
The idea behind TollBit is simple: make a platform that links writers who make high-quality, up-to-date data with AI businesses that need it. AI businesses would be able to buy data on a “pay-per-use” basis in this market. This would mean that publishers would get paid every time their material is accessed. The goal is to give content makers a stable way to make money, since AI-driven futures put them at greater risk of being left behind.
AI companies, especially those working on big language models, need to always have access to new data. Some companies, like OpenAI, have started to make licensing deals with publishers, but a lot of smaller publishers are still not able to join these deals. TollBit wants to reach the “long tail” of authors by giving them a way to make money from their material that is both fair and efficient.
What the RAG Factor Is
The idea of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is a central part of TollBit’s approach. RAG-enabled models get information from specific sources in real time to make decisions, while standard AI models only use training data that already exists. This method works especially well for search engines, where users expect replies that are correct and up to date.
The popularity of RAG-based search engines could change the way people normally look. These new search engines don’t give users a list of links; instead, they give them full answers directly, so they don’t have to go to each website individually. Publishers are worried that this change will mean they lose a lot of money from ads because fewer people will visit their sites.
The business on TollBit might be able to help with this issue. The platform could give producers a new way to make money by letting AI companies pay for access to new material on a per-use basis. This approach would also give AI companies a reason to care about the quality of the data they use. This would lower the risk of false information and make sure that people who make content get paid fairly for their work.
How TollBit’s business model is just a guess
TollBit’s business plan is still mostly just an idea, even though its goal is very positive. Since its start in February, the company has added about 100 outlets, and three AI companies are now testing its platform. While no money has changed hands on the site yet, this raises questions about whether or not the business plan will work.
Investors, on the other hand, seem optimistic about TollBit’s chances. Sunflower Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Operator Collective, AIX, and Liquid 2 Ventures are some of the well-known backers who have given $7 million to the company. Campbell Brown, a former TV host and Meta’s former head of news relations, was recently hired as a senior assistant by TollBit. This influx of money and knowledge shows that the company’s goal is getting a lot of attention, even though it hasn’t been fully achieved yet.
Problems and chances to come up
One of the hardest things for TollBit is getting AI companies to pay for material they can get for free right now. Some businesses might be ready to pay to stay out of trouble with the law or get access to niche, high-quality content, but it’s still not clear if this will be enough to keep the platform going in the long run.
Joslin and Panigrahi say that AI companies will have to pay for content in the end for three main reasons: scraping the web is getting harder and more expensive, companies want to avoid ongoing copyright lawsuits, and companies want to access a wider range of content that would be hard to license individually. Also, as more websites put in place steps to stop scraping without permission, a tool like TollBit might become even more useful.
People might see TollBit’s business plan as a way for publishers to get “hush money” for material that could be used to spread false information, which could be another problem. The founders quickly disagree with this description, pointing out that they are picky about which AI companies they work with and that paying for material makes people more likely to keep the quality of the sources high.
Theorizing About the Future
TollBit isn’t the only company looking into new ways to license AI material. Another AI startup called Perplexity just started a program called Publishers’ Program that will share income with publishers whose material is used to make AI responses. But, like TollBit’s, Perplexity’s plan is still just an idea. Its success will depend on when ads start showing up and how much money they bring in.
The people who started TollBit are hopeful that their model will finally catch on, especially since the AI business is always changing. They say that as AI apps get smarter and more common, the need for new, high-quality data will only grow. They think that by giving publishers a way to get paid for their work in real time, they can build a long-lasting environment that helps both content makers and AI companies.
AI and content licensing have reached a new level.
Because AI is getting better and more used in daily life, it will be even more important to find fair and long-lasting ways to license material. TollBit wants to be the iTunes of AI content licensing, which is a big step toward meeting this need. The business plan of the company hasn’t been tested yet, but if it works, it could be very good for both authors and AI companies.
More and more people see AI as both a chance and a threat to traditional industries. TollBit’s method shows how things could be in the future, where content creators are fairly paid for their work and AI companies can get the high-quality data they need to do well. We don’t know if this dream will come true, but TollBit is a company to keep an eye on as the world of AI content licensing changes.
