A new AI platform led by activist and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick aims to make it easier for anyone to publish—and monetize—their original stories as comics and manga.
Lumi, unveiled in beta form Wednesday, includes AI-powered tools designed to let anyone with so much as an idea develop full-fledged stories, says Kaepernick, the company’s founder and CEO. From the start, Lumi is designed to support people looking to create comic books, graphic novels, and manga with AI tools that can help flesh out characters conceptually and visually, draft and edit dialogue and text, and build full images for their work.
“Our focus is on democratizing storytelling,” Kaepernick says.
Once creators are satisfied with their projects, they’ll be able to publish and sell them through the Lumi platform, including digital and physical copies. Kaepernick, a published author and lifetime comic fan who also founded his own publishing company, says he hopes the AI assistance and publishing tools will help overcome some of the typical barriers and long production cycles traditionally inherent in getting work published and sold, enabling stories to be told that might otherwise go unheard.
Users who wish to sell accompanying merchandise—like T-shirts, mugs, and posters featuring story characters or scenes—will also be able to design and sell them through Lumi, which will handle manufacturing, sales, and shipping.
“We’ll handle all the logistics behind the scenes,” says Kaepernick. “One of the things that we’ve found is that creators love creating, and they want to focus on creating. Most of them do not want to be business operators.”
The platform will offer users three subscription tiers for access to various AI tools and take a cut of book and merchandise sales, but users will retain all rights to their work. That means that if they’re ever not satisfied with the Lumi experience or want to take advantage of other opportunities, they’ll be free to develop and sell their work elsewhere.
