The creator-focused media and tech company formerly called BBTV has rebranded to RHEI, and today announced the launch of RHEI Data Pro, a data monetization platform it says can help creators earn up to $100,000 for every 1,000 hours of content they produce.
How? By licensing that content out to companies making generative AI models.
Shahrzad Rafati, founder and CEO of RHEI, tells Tubefilter Data Pro is launching with over $35 million in committed partnerships with AI companies, and that “a large number of content creators already have participated, both the existing creators we’ve worked with previously as well as new content creators.”
Generative AI’s rapid development over the past couple of years has given rise to creator concerns that models made by major players like OpenAI may have been trained on their content without their consent. Rafati says RHEI acknowledges those concerns, and views generative AI as an important avenue for creator monetization, so long as creators are able to control who uses their content and are appropriately compensated when it is used.
“RHEI is committed to ensuring that creators are empowered to actively take part in the evolution of AI by ensuring they are fairly compensated when their content and data fuel innovation,” Rafati says. “The increasing symbiosis between AI and human creativity is very exciting, and we developed RHEI Data Pro to create new revenue pathways for creators based on the years of work they’ve already put into their craft.”
RHEI is only partnering with companies that train their models on data given with consent (“as far as we know,” Rafati notes), and Data Pro is a path for creators of all sizes to give that consent.
“At the end of the day, a platform is not going to work directly with someone who has 5,000 hours of content, or 200 hours of content,” Rafati says. “So for us, one of the biggest pieces here is that we’re making this accessible to any creator, regardless of their size. If you have 500 good hours on fishing, it’s as valuable as someone who has maybe 10,000 hours of content, or 200,000 hours of content. It gives access to smaller creators.”
RHEI hasn’t revealed which companies it’s partnered with so far, but Rafati refers to them as “trillion-dollar technology businesses.” There are only 10 publicly traded companies in the world worth a trillion dollars, and among them are Amazon, Microsoft, YouTube‘s parent Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Tesla.
These companies, Rafati says, are only the beginning. “We feel this is going to be a truly recurring revenue stream for content creators, because we’re not just looking at the foundational models, we are looking at every technology company and app that is going to be using their data for training purposes,” she explains.
When a creator decides they want to license their content to one (or more) of RHEI’s Data Pro AI partners, RHEI has a “large data team” that jumps into action, Rafati says. The team will take the creator’s videos, package them, make sure they’re “amplified with right metadata,” then send it over to the partner. The creator is largely hands off; they give consent, and then get paid a flat rate per hour of content licensed. They also retain all ownership rights to their videos.
In exchange for providing Data Pro and for packaging the videos, RHEI takes a cut of the flat rate the AI company pays to the creator. It isn’t publicly disclosing what that cut is.
RHEI has made several strategic pivots over the years, including a period where it was the internet’s largest multichannel network. Data Pro is the first development in what Rafati says is RHEI’s next evolution, “pioneering the symbiosis between technology and human creativity.”
Lewis Ball, RHEI’s Chief Strategy and Product Officer, adds that RHEI sees an opportunity to “redefine the role of data–transforming it into a lucrative revenue stream for creators and content owners.”
“We are no longer in the creator economy,” Rafati says. “This is what we call the ‘augmented creativity era’–because it is truly AI and creators working together.”
RHEI says it already has 5 petabytes of content available for AI companies to use in training. Creators/content owners interested in adding theirs to the pool can apply for Data Pro here: datapro.rhei.com.
Source: https://www.tubefilter.com/2025/01/09/bbtv-rhei-data-pro-ai-content-licensing/