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Artificial intelligence startup ProRata.ai wants to bring a more equitable compensation model to media companies with the launch of its AI-powered search engine, Gist.ai.
The startup uses gen AI to accurately attribute search results and share revenue with content owners. This revenue is generated by subscriptions and ads that run Gist. People can sign up for early access to Gist, with a full release slated for early 2025.
“Most of the other [AI] services today are stealing, scraping, [and] shoplifting content,” said Bill Gross, CEO of ProRata. “Our goal is to shift the industry to fair payment.”
With AI search engines like Perplexity and OpenAI’s ChatGPT gaining traction, users are increasingly moving away from browsing links to receiving concise, summarized answers. Meanwhile, advertisers are grappling with how to adapt their strategies for this new wave of AI-driven search.
ProRata—valued at $130 million—also announced content licensing deals with a range of media companies, including Arena Group (Athlon Sports, Men’s Journal, TheStreet Parade), Atlas Obscura, BuzzFeed, Recurrent Ventures, Graham Holdings Company (Foreign Policy, Slate), and ADWEEK, among others. In the last five months, ProRata has inked deals with 400 media partners, the company told ADWEEK.
ProRata plans to share half of its revenue from subscriptions and ads with its licensing partners, which already include titles like Time, Fortune, Financial Times, Daily Mail, Axel Springer, and Universal Music Group.
“BuzzFeed is a proud partner with ProRata to accurately and fairly bring high-quality content and journalism into play with a growing information ecosystem,” BuzzFeed’s chief business officer, Ken Blom, said in a statement. “ProRata’s approach to fair attribution for content and transparency and sourcing makes them a leading partner in AI development for publishers.”
Gross, who has been credited with inventing the pay-per-click keyword ad model, the backbone of the digital advertising industry—sees ProRata as a way to solve the issue of AI firms siphoning off media traffic and ad revenue. Unlike traditional media types like music streaming, which track revenue via views or streams, generative AI lacks a clear metric for attribution. Gross said ProRata’s model is similar to how Spotify tracks streams to distribute revenue.