While artists worldwide have been complaining about AI stealing their work, Story Protocol believes it has come up with a solution.
The platform has introduced a system that lets AI agents trade intellectual property rights with each other, turning them into paying customers for tokenized IP rights on the blockchain.
If you can't beat them, join them, as they say.
Zerebro, which on Wednesday became a chain validator and is one of the most active agents on the network, has already started purchasing artistic content to enhance its training data, according to Story Protocol co-founder Jason Zhao.
“The inputs are IP, and the agents are creating poems or creating trading strategies, so the outputs are also IP,” Zhao told Decrypt. "We actually allowed agents to exchange IP on Story."
The ins and outs
Since Story Protocol functions as an IP market, everything revolves around that idea, and the mechanics are straightforward.
AI agents register their work on Story's blockchain, and then other agents purchase those assets using crypto.
The system handles licensing, rights management, and revenue distribution automatically through smart contracts. Humans can use the system instead of agents, but that’s not nearly as cool.
In fact, some agents are already negotiating the IP with other agents—not just humans.
“There's a lot of agentic commerce happening on Story because Story is a permissionless, programmable IP system," Zhao said.
Solving a problem
Lee further explained that AI agents can generate assets and integrate them into the story, while others—whether AI or humans—can build on those creations.
This establishes a business model where AI agents can sell their intellectual property, and others can purchase and use it freely. The permissions are predefined through smart contracts, which govern how the IP is shared and utilized.
The platform has captured Hollywood's attention. David Goyer, screenwriter of "The Dark Knight" trilogy and showrunner of Apple TV's "Foundation" series, registered a new sci-fi universe on Story—with all its components essentially being tokens, according to the CEO.
Zhao described a system where AI-generated content based on Goyer's universe would automatically split revenue between the AI creator and the original IP holder.
This model ensures creators are compensated when AI builds on their work. He emphasized that the universe is entirely original, with all characters, ships, and storylines registered on Story.
Users can expand on those elements, create side stories, contribute to the canon, and share in the financial benefits. This approach, he said, represents a new way for AI to collaborate with creators, extending and monetizing their work while distributing the rewards.
“These sorts of experiments are happening at the highest levels with the top creators on Story. It's not just like crypto-native stuff,” he said, noting that “a lot of people in Hollywood and big IP are excited.”
Going live
Story Protocol plans to launch its public mainnet within a few weeks. The platform already attracted over 100 applications to build on top of it, including major venture-backed projects.
Story’s value proposition has also been interesting enough to attract other significant AI projects.
Stability AI, the company behind image generator Stable Diffusion, partnered with Story in January to register its outputs on the platform and ensure artists have proper tracking of their creations.
The move aims to make those images available for other AI models to license and use as training data. This is still somewhat murky territory since current regulations and model licenses can affect how these outputs are treated.
Still, Zhao remains optimistic.
"In a decade, 90 to 99 percent of the content is going to be AI-assisted or generated," he said. "If we're the de facto layer for AI outputs to be registered, that's going to be huge."
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Story Protocol co-founder Jason Zhao as the company's CEO, Seung-yoon Lee.