Hive3 launches to connect brands with leading AI creatives

By now, brands and individuals know that they can find freelance creatives to work on projects for them on platforms such as Fiverr or even on major social media sites such as Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter).

But generative AI has changed the game. The technology is fast-becoming a standard creative tool thanks to the likes of text-to-image generators such as OpenAI’s DALL-E 3, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, Ideogram, and text-to-video and image-to-video products such as Runway’s Gen2 and Pika Labs.

With all these new tools already powering widely-viewed and groundbreaking creative projects across the web, brands may be left uncertain of who and where to turn to when looking for a creative who has a command over GenAI.

That’s the problem Forum3 is hoping to solve. The two-year old digital tech startup based in Seattle, Washington, was co-founded by Adam Brotman, former Chief Digital Officer at Starbucks (and creator of the popular Starbucks Rewards mobile app) along with Andy Sack, a former innovation consultant for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who both serve as co-CEOs of the new venture.

Gamifying AI-created brand assets with cash prizes

Forum’s new online platform Hive3 was unveiled in preview back in the summer of 2023. It was built to essentially gamify the process of connecting brands with experienced and dynamic AI creatives, offering different time-boxed challenges in which creatives would compete to create the best assets for a given brand in exchange for cash prizes. Winners are chosen by Hive3’s community and/or a panel of judges.

Since that time, Hive3 has hosted 10 “community-driven challenges” for brands. Today, the platform is launching to the public and with it is “Season One,” a series of “roughly 30 back-to-back competitions,” for different brands held weekly, according to the site. “To qualify for the playoffs, you just need to place 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in one of these.”

AI creatives who place 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in each brand challenge will receive some portion of a $5,000 pot, while playoff winners will receive grand prizes between $10,000 and $50,000, according to the Hive 3 site.

While GenAI clearly shows enormous potential and promise as a creative tool, some brands may be wary of seeking it out given the unresolved legal issues surrounding the data used to train the AI models that power the tech, as well as the fact that the U.S. Copyright Office has repeatedly ruled GenAI artworks can’t be copyrighted.

First challenge for Crumbl Cookies coming up on Nov. 3, 2023

The first challenge is for the white-hot dessert brand Crumbl Cookies, and it begins later this week, on Friday, Nov. 3, 2023, with a deadline of Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023 and a $5,000 total prize pool.

The actual assignment for the challenge is quite open-ended so far, simply “Create an innovative ad campaign for a fast-growing cookie company.”

“The new digital transformation playbook starts with brands understanding how to use AI, and the Forum3 team is uniquely positioned to guide brands as they navigate this technology, often for the first time,” said Brotman in a press statement. “We look forward to partnering with forward-thinking brands like Crumbl Cookies to generate new types of creative output, activate a community of customers, and elevate brand marketing using AI.”

Already, the Hive3 community has hired a roster of influential AI artists and designers to offer tutorials and further evangelize the platform, among them Heather Cooper, Tatiana Tsiguleva, Nicolas Neubert, and Ben Myhre.

“Platforms like Hive3 give creators the opportunity to use new skills with generative AI technology to produce full projects with different tool stacks that mimic real-world activities with a competitive spirit,” said Cooper. “I’m excited to join Hive3 as a brand ambassador, and I look forward to helping more creators advance their skills using generative AI.”