This article has been revised and corrected from the original version.

SmarterLicense, a West Hollywood-based content licensing platform, has launched in beta. The company is armed with $1.1 million in angel funding from the likes of Barbara Jones, who manages Frankie Jonas and the Tiktok famous D’Amelio family. The platform aims to help users control and monetize content in the fast-paced age of virality.

The advent of generative artificial intelligence has created a minefield of copyright grey areas that leaves potential IP, and millions of dollars, unprotected.

“How do we empower people to track and see where their assets are going across the internet and start building valuable IP portfolios,” questioned Liz Hagelthorn, the founder of SmarterLicense.

Hagelthorn, who worked at Twitter and Google before managing viral content on Instagram, founded SmarterLicense in 2023. At one point, Hagelthorn oversaw 127 Instagram accounts. She said other pages would often steal her memes.

Memes are the work of one person that turn into a framework for everyone to use. AI has latched onto that blueprint – leveraging the work of others to create content – and taken it to another level, spawning lawsuits. Artists have sued AI platforms for using their work to create new – free – visuals.

Enter SmarterLicense. The company is building a licensing and legal framework around different types of content and helps users track how they perform. The goal, Hagelthorn says, is to bolster the rights of creators by avoiding copyright disputes and securing credit.

“Now we’re starting to see that maybe there are more rights that are copyrightable, especially as digital media tools start to evolve,” Hagelthorn said. “That might be likeness, tone, it could be AI training data. There are all these other rights that need protecting that the Copyright Office can’t really keep up with.”

SmarterLicense recently completed a pilot with Premier League. The soccer league saw a 20% to 30% viewership decline as its audience watched highlight clips posted by users on Tiktok and other video platforms. Using SmarterLicence, the organization licensed clips at a set price and created custom contracts with creators quickly. The platform also allows users to negotiate in other ways, like getting credit.

“There starts to be value in my IP,” Hagelthorn said.