"The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air."
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Throughout all of human history, storytelling has been a source of communication, inspiration, and entertainment. It’s a consistent cornerstone to who we are as a species. Storytelling drives us toward curiosity, innovation, creativity, and community.
When you combine all of these traits of the human condition, you get change. Every time. Like most economic and societal advancements, change can be a mixed bag and is often best understood by getting in the weeds of the issue at hand.
Today, change is happening far more quickly than the usual hum of advancement (knowledge already doubles every 13 months). Technology has democratized many sectors of our modern life and things are becoming more automated. Artificial Intelligences are advancing at a rate far greater than people's ability to understand, and one of America's greatest industries of export (Hollywood) is navigating the most discordant period in its history.
In moments like this, where technology is advancing alongside a deluge of collective issues diffusing our focus elsewhere, thoughtful development is necessary. Restriction and restraint should be at the table as much as ingenuity and vision. It's a balance.
In regards to the development of AIs, we've seen industry leaders calling for extreme consideration and measure. Perhaps predictably, this has been met with mixed reviews and fueled an already fearful public perspective. Threading the needle is proving difficult.
For the entertainment industry, change without unity around a goal can be quite troublesome. There are existing processes, relationships, and so much more that keep the massive, multi-billion dollar engine moving. It's difficult to work on an engine when it can't, or won't, stop long enough for improvements. It’d be like expecting an F1 car to get new tires without entering the pit.
Ironically, this kind of change is the driving reason for the entertainment industry’s strikes we have witnessed this year. The development of streaming services, spearheaded by Netflix, disrupted how the industry operated altogether. Change was forcibly implemented by "outsiders" without consideration for the whole.
Regardless, the entertainment engine runs as it has for over a century. Hollywood has been seen as the mountaintop for generations, and now we regularly see equally great productions coming out of the UK, Europe, Korea, and India. All operating at the highest caliber and pinnacle of storytelling craft and technology achievement across the world. The collective Mt. Olympus that millions around the world aspire to reach.
Many are unable to walk through those gates, so technology has advanced around it, and many storytellers with it. You have platforms like Wattpad, which brings nearly 100 million people per month to write and read original and fan fictions, and other technologies and communities taking full advantage of modern technologies.
If we were to summarize the above, we might call it "tension." Some of which is healthy and natural. A lot of it, though, is stressful, unnecessary, and counterproductive.
So where does change at the intersection of modern technology, storytelling, and the entertainment industry take us? And what does the future look like?
“We’re on the brink of a revolution in generative art. Personalized entertainment will change a lot about human culture.”
David Friedberg, from TPB Partners and the All-In Podcast
Mustafa Suleyman is an artificial intelligence researcher, the co-founder of DeepMind, and author of The Coming Wave. He recently discussed the change going on in the entertainment space with writer/actor/filmmaker/host Dax Shepard on Armchair Expert. (This is just an excerpt; we recommend listening to the entire thoughtful discussion.)
Dax Shepard (left) and Mustafa Suleyman (right) speaking on Armchair Expert.
Suleyman: “Over the next five to ten years or so, text, video, audio, imagery–it is just going to be produced at zero marginal cost. [There will] be an unbelievable explosion of creativity because now the barrier to entry is lower than it’s ever been. … We now have hundred of millions of directors producing incredibly engaging content so much that we all want to spend time on TikTok. We’re leaving YouTube behind, and YouTube left TV behind, and that is what happens when you get access to a new technology. I think that’s the trajectory we’re on from here. High quality productions in the future are really going to be about the edit, taking away the extra and simplifying."
Shepard: “What happens with this technology is it democratizes and gives everybody access to executing their ideas.”
This is just a small excerpt; we recommend listening to the entire thoughtful discussion. Especially to hear Shepard’s perspective about those who have honed their craft. Over the years, millions of people have spent their lives mastering skills in order to tell amazing stories. We completely agree: the human element of this craft cannot be understated and needs to be protected.
We also deeply agree with Suleyman about culture’s creative trajectory and that the craft will lean more into vision and curation. We also agree that there have been many millions more who never had a chance to display their craft (and make a living) because they didn’t have the “arbitrary luck that enables people to get access.”
The solution lies in giving people modern tooling that defends the human craft and, critically, enhances it - giving them “the potential to be massively uplifted.”
This is what we’ve been working on.
“Creators will win. It’s a great time for creators.”
Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company
Onword will unleash storytellers worldwide to share their craft unlike anything before. Onword will do this by building the modern destination for crafting and visualizing stories, building your story career, and discovering original content.
We believe the future of storytelling is one where the gap between idea and sharable media is smaller, production timelines are collapsed, media is malleable, IP attribution is transparent, and creators are supported and empowered by modern tools like AI (not replaced by them).
AI allows "the gap" between a creator's idea and what they can realistically create to close.
Image source: Cleo Abram, Huge* If True AI music episode
All stories are crafted by people. The future of storytelling must defend the human craft, enhance their abilities, and amplifying what is possible.
Onword believes the successful approach to building AI tools for creatives will fuse human creativity with AI tooling as an extension of the creative’s mind, enabling them to stay in the creative flow and iterate through ideas quickly. In other words, enhance the existing human workflow instead of replace it.
There are great companies building in AI, many of which are geared toward creatives and storytellers. However, the creative user still has to go to one destination to create an output, then take that asset to another tool to compile, and so forth. Onword will unify this process.
Onword maximizes the accessibility of multiple services for our users, and builds an environment where AI tools can be used in the storytelling workflow. While Onword’s platform has proprietary technology at its foundation, our strategic approach to AI development is to leverage the already developing services creators love, and enhance the experience and technologies by providing optionality.
Tear down the walls
Imagine a screenwriter in New York is leading a writer's room on a new project. This writer's room, which includes visual artists, collaborates on the script in Onword. Once the draft is finalized the Lead locks that draft and all attribution of each individual's efforts are transparently presented, approved, and locked into the IP ownership artifact.
In this example, as the story goes through revisions, and a timeline of its development is tracked and available in a repository, not unlike Github.Onword’s patent-pending Attribution Model automatically collects contribution data, calculates the percentage contribution of each user, and presents that in a clear breakdown for each user’s creative contribution. From there, users are empowered to approve or amend their contribution for the project’s Lead.
Power to the storytellers
Imagine a fiction writer in Iowa discovering a short story on Onword and being inspired by the world and characters they created. Because of Onword's Attribution Model, that writer then requests permission to write a new story with the original author's permission. The original author can grant permission and set how much ownership they retain as the original creator of the IP.
In this example, gone are the days of "Wild West" fan fiction. A new era of Authorized Fiction can encourage permission-based, trackable story remixing, expanding, and collaboration between authors, artists, and studios.
Onword will use clear governance on a blockchain. This transparency is an advantage in IP management, and will make ownership easy to observe.
A modern approach to a timeless craft
Imagine a creative director in London with a tight deadline writing a new commercial pitch on the latest piece of home tech. This creative director makes a private project on Onword, invites a few teammates, writes a treatment, adds imagery, edits the export with Onword's visualize tool, and exports it. This shareable media has voiceover already applied and imagery paced out with the script so the client can get an accurate idea of the tone and pace of this new pitch. And each team member receives and approves their proper attribution.
In this example, the Creator Director is better able to lead the creative flow, both individually and with her team, is more productive, and has a sharable deliverable moments after locking in the script.
Onword's visualization tool is what makes it a storytelling platform, automatically compiling written word, visuals, voiceover, and audio–setting the stage for dynamic iterative evolution as well.
New standards for creator workflow and IP rights
Imagine a concept artist in Manila who has illustrated a story he's had in mind for years. All the art is there, fully storyboarded, but he's not a writer. The artist creates a project on Onword and uses AI to help him give his ideas words. He then refines the output to something he's happy with and marks on his project that he's looking for writers to collaborate with. He spots two writers' profiles in particular - they have contributed to several projects that are similar in tone to his vision. They then partner together to add incredible dialogue that inspires new art. When the story is done, everyone is given their attribution, and he edits the animation and timing of the final product. He even adds a background music track that captures the emotions of the important scenes.
In this example, the concept artist is tapping into a modern environment focused on empowering the ideas he already has by making ideation, collaboration, and visualization accessible. Because of Onword's platform, he can use story tools created by Onword, or by partners using Onword's API, to share his vision more authentically, and can find collaborators who have built a reputation as talented storytellers on Onword.
Onword’s API allows our patent-pending attribution model, blockchain powered governance, and the visualize tool to be enabled in the hands of creative storytellers.
“Excelsior”
Latin phrase that means "ever upward"
We believe there are greater heights available for every aspect of storytelling. Whether you're in Los Angeles, Iowa, or around the world there are passionate and talented people who want to tell stories, contribute to the development of original IP, and discover their next favorite story. As with any great structure, we're focused on building a strong foundation of three core pillars: a story tool environment, a transparent IP protection model, and a thriving community.
While the technology and patent-pending backend is important, we are nothing without the community, the advocates, who believe in this vision. We work with playwrights in NYC, screenwriters in LA, mega producers, creative directors, novelists, and hobby writers. Their insight, enthusiasm, and support of this project is critical. We look forward to seeing the Onword storytelling community soar.
We build to create a better future for those in the storytelling industry now, those who have always dreamed about doing so, and those who will come. We build to enable storytellers to visualize and share their stories by reimagining story collaboration, providing transparent attribution, and by pioneering innovation.
At Onword, we believe in empowering storytellers around the world to tell their stories with modern tooling that gives them authentic expression and reach. Our vision is to make storytelling production accessible to all.
Join us.
