Incention is a desperate attempt to make new Hollywood IP with AI, fans and the blockchain

You’ll only need to remember the name Incention for the brief moment you’re reading this post, because you’ll likely never have to think about it again. As Variety reports, it’s a new platform for building new Hollywood IP using the combined power of AI tools, fan contributions and the blockchain. Incention describes itself as “a new blueprint for building modern franchises, where IP holders, communities, and agents collaborate seamlessly in an endless playground rooted in real IP.” Because, of course, the real problem plaguing Hollywood today is the inability to build franchises with user-generated content, unproven AI tools and blockchain hype.

Incention’s first franchise — the modern Hollywood term for “story” — is Emergence, a sci-fi premise from Blade and The Dark Knight writer David S. Goyer. It centers on a universe where a white hole appears (my god, the opposite of a black hole!) and spews out mysterious high tech objects. Goyer describes it as a “creative sandbox” for artists and fans to build “limitless narratives” across multiple genres and mediums.

Atlas, an AI agent that’s meant to be a “creative partner,” serves as Incention’s main AI tool for developing content. It’ll be able to come up with ideas, help story direction and even generate full videos, according to the company. Incention also claims that Atlas can post autonomously to social media platforms to improve itself, perhaps because social media engagement for real franchises is too dangerous for humans these days.

Incention is powered by the Story blockchain, which will help to track the content produced by fans and creators across all of its franchises. Again, a major problem that needed to be solved. The NFT grift is over, and we’ve yet to see any product outside of Bitcoin and other digital currencies tapping into the blockchain effectively.

“A couple of years ago, I realized that it’s [AI] not going away, it’s going to completely embed itself within society,” Goyer told Variety. “So I tried to learn as much about it as I could, whether it be ChatGPT or Midjourney or the various other tools, and I think those have useful applications that don’t necessarily put people out of a job — although there are a lot of potential AI applications that could. But in this instance, we’re not putting anyone out of a job. If anything, this is a tool to allow people that normally wouldn’t have an entry point into Hollywood or publishing houses or things like that.”

The big problem Incention faces, though, is that it’s not actually fixing anything in Hollywood. Similar to the short-lived Quibi, the entire impetus behind Incention is driven by technology, instead of genuine demands from creators or a franchise-hungry public. And unlike Quibi, Incention isn’t launching with nearly $2 billion in funding (though it has raised an undisclosed amount from the a16z crypto fund) or the Hollywood bonafides of someone like DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Incention also seems to fundamentally misunderstand how fan-produced content works. People aren’t spending hours on their fanfic, fanart and cosplay simply because they want to get paid. They’re doing it because someone created a story and characters that genuinely moved them. Good luck getting the same sort of support from a generic-sounding franchise like Emergence.