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OpenAI Hires Charles Porch To Head Creative Partnerships
Charles Porch // Illustration by Kate Walker
OpenAI has hired Charles Porch — the exec who was the connective tissue between Instagram and the creative community for the past 15 years — to win over creatives to AI.
The Big Picture: OpenAI has a complicated relationship with the creative community. While it has inked a billion-dollar pact with Disney to license “animated, masked, and creature” characters, the company’s scraping of copyrighted material for training data and brash rollout of Sora angered rights holders across the board. Sam Altman may be thinking it’s time to reset relations with the creative industries.
Behind The Hire: Charles Porch wants to do for AI what he did with social media — “threading the needle between culture and tech,” as he told Vanity Fair.
Now he’ll join as OpenAI’s first VP of global creative partnerships, reporting to the company’s CEO of applications, Fidji Simo.
He’s tasked with leveraging his contacts across music, film, fashion, sports, and the creator economy to figure out how the company can build products that best serve management and artists in those fields.
He will likely also have a mandate to license more IP from rights holders for use in Sora and to help develop interactive entertainment partnerships.
Closing Thoughts: Porch is responsible for helping many A-list creatives not just onboard to Instagram, but strategize how to use the platform to launch projects and connect with fans. That included working with Beyoncé on a surprise album release, getting Pope Francis on Instagram, and convincing TikTok creators to migrate to Reels.
But can Porch really get creatives to want to work with OpenAI? With top talent like Matthew McConaughey, Darren Aronofsky, and Gwyneth Paltrow already experimenting with the tech, Porch seemingly has an opening to convince creatives that OpenAI’s systems should be their tools of choice… it just might be his toughest job yet.
The Future: If Porch can win the trust of the creative community, he may become one of the key liaisons in developing the tech in a way that respects artists’ rights.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.