Last week, I visited Bitform Gallery for an art exhibition showcasing the works of digital artist Emily Xie. Her piece "Infinite Scroll" draws inspiration from ancient Chinese seal script characters. With her technical expertise, Emily injects fresh life into these traditional forms, and the results are truly beautiful!

But what I was most interested in checking out was the AI model "Scroll" that was trained with her work and the platform Titles.xyz that trained the model. With the trained model, anyone could input texts and the output is an image generated with the styles of Emily's work. Here is an example:

Title.xyz is an interesting product. They help artists monetize creativities through AI models which are trained based on their work. If anyone uses the artists models to generate images, the artists will get paid. Each trained model is an NFT that is owned by the artist and lives on the blockchain.

During the show, people were able to play with the model and generated some really great images. I was blown away by the creativities of the community that night!

There’s no shortage of generative AI tools—Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL·E, and more—capable of transforming text into stunning images, and they’re improving every month. So why does the world need Titles.xyz? My answer is a strong YES—Titles.xyz, or platforms like it, absolutely have a place. Let me break it down from the perspectives of both consumers and creators.

For Content Creators: The rise of AI poses existential challenges for creators. Their work is often swept up as only training data for AI models, with no compensation in sight. This reminds me of what happened to established e-commerce brands when Amazon began dominating the online commerce space. Many brands like Nike, Ford or Budweiser, with their own distinct storefronts and brand identities, didn’t want to be reduced to generic listings on Amazon’s platform. That’s when Shopify emerged, empowering brands to build and monetize their own online businesses. History shows this "counter-positioning" strategy recurring time and again—and Titles.xyz feels like a similar move for creators in the AI age.

For Consumers: Many generative AI tools are like Amazon: fantastic for grabbing commodity items like toilet paper or shampoo, where style and brand matter less. But when it comes to finding a gift for someone special or a standout dress for a big event, consumers want more than generic options—they care about unique styles and brand resonance. This is where I see Titles.xyz shining. It offers a curated selection of creators’ distinct styles for users to choose from. Today, it’s artists; tomorrow, it could be designers or any creative professional.

I first came across Titles.xyz a year ago and tried to get IOSG, the fund that I used to work for, to invest. Unfortunately, the fund GP vetoed. The results have noticeably improved since I tested them last year. The founder, Sorren, told me that onboarding a new artist still requires some tweaking to the model and process, but much of it has been automated compared to last year.

I am excited about what lies ahead for Titles.xyz in the near future.

Last week, I visited Bitform Gallery for an art exhibition showcasing the works of digital artist Emily Xie. Her piece "Infinite Scroll" draws inspiration from ancient Chinese seal script characters. With her technical expertise, Emily injects fresh life into these traditional forms, and the results are truly beautiful!

But what I was most interested in checking out was the AI model "Scroll" that was trained with her work and the platform Titles.xyz that trained the model. With the trained model, anyone could input texts and the output is an image generated with the styles of Emily's work. Here is an example:

Title.xyz is an interesting product. They help artists monetize creativities through AI models which are trained based on their work. If anyone uses the artists models to generate images, the artists will get paid. Each trained model is an NFT that is owned by the artist and lives on the blockchain.

During the show, people were able to play with the model and generated some really great images. I was blown away by the creativities of the community that night!

There’s no shortage of generative AI tools—Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL·E, and more—capable of transforming text into stunning images, and they’re improving every month. So why does the world need Titles.xyz? My answer is a strong YES—Titles.xyz, or platforms like it, absolutely have a place. Let me break it down from the perspectives of both consumers and creators.

For Content Creators: The rise of AI poses existential challenges for creators. Their work is often swept up as only training data for AI models, with no compensation in sight. This reminds me of what happened to established e-commerce brands when Amazon began dominating the online commerce space. Many brands like Nike, Ford or Budweiser, with their own distinct storefronts and brand identities, didn’t want to be reduced to generic listings on Amazon’s platform. That’s when Shopify emerged, empowering brands to build and monetize their own online businesses. History shows this "counter-positioning" strategy recurring time and again—and Titles.xyz feels like a similar move for creators in the AI age.

For Consumers: Many generative AI tools are like Amazon: fantastic for grabbing commodity items like toilet paper or shampoo, where style and brand matter less. But when it comes to finding a gift for someone special or a standout dress for a big event, consumers want more than generic options—they care about unique styles and brand resonance. This is where I see Titles.xyz shining. It offers a curated selection of creators’ distinct styles for users to choose from. Today, it’s artists; tomorrow, it could be designers or any creative professional.

I first came across Titles.xyz a year ago and tried to get IOSG, the fund that I used to work for, to invest. Unfortunately, the fund GP vetoed. The results have noticeably improved since I tested them last year. The founder, Sorren, told me that onboarding a new artist still requires some tweaking to the model and process, but much of it has been automated compared to last year.

I am excited about what lies ahead for Titles.xyz in the near future.