EXCLUSIVE: A quartet of industry vets with experience at Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. and NBCUniversal are teaming to launch AiPhelion, a consulting firm focused on intellectual property in the AI age.
Founding partners include Netflix and Warner Bros alum Victoria Furniss, who will lead the company as CEO, along with co-founders Michael Jury, Bret Boivin, and John Byrne. With a blend of backgrounds spanning the U.S., UK and Europe, the partners will operate primarily in London and L.A. With a blend of legal, business, media, tech and regulatory experience, they will look to offer clients expertise across multiple marketplaces.
The company’s aim is to help companies across the media, entertainment and tech sectors leverage AI but also manage risks and protect the rights of intellectual property owners. The rise of AI has brought a storm of litigation and labor unrest, with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA both striking in 2023 in part due to advances in the technology and the threat to traditional jobs. Disney and NBCUniversal recently sued AI firm Midjourney, accusing the company of infringing on their copyrights. As billions of dollars of capital pour into the space, studios and streamers are gradually integrating AI into their workflows, but also proceeding with caution given the high degree of sensitivity, with economic forces also creating challenges to traditional businesses.
During her run at Netflix and Warner Bros., Furniss led teams connecting creativity and technology. She also founded the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, a coalition whose members include Hollywood studios as well as streaming and tech companies.
Jury, who spent more than a decade at Disney, is overseeing global business development strategy at AiPhelion. He is also an adjunct professor focused on IP and AI at USC Gould Law School.
Boivin, AiPhelion’s CTO, is co-founder and former CTO of Incopro, whose technology protects more than 750 global brands including Richemont and Harley Davidson. He also held content protection roles at Warner Bros. and NBCU.
Byrne brings extensive media and tech experience to AiPhelion, where he is an advisor, board member and investor. He was the former head of Dorsey & Whitney’s London office and the co-founder of Therium, a noted European litigation funding business.
“Each founding partner carries the credibility of Big Law and Major Studio victories, but operates with startup agility,” Furniss said. “There’s no exact parallel to what we are seeing with AI right now but we can see analogies with the creative industries’ fight against online piracy. Each of the team has deep experience in this space and now brings that battle-tested wisdom to AI’s Wild West. When the stakes are so high and the playbook doesn’t really exist, you want a team that’s already won IP battles and turned the mistakes of yesterday into the lessons for today.”
Byrne said AiPhelion “isn’t just another consultancy – we are at the convergence of IP and AI.” The firm is setting out to tackle what he called “Law & Policy 3.0,” an emerging body of policy, theory and business practice where “deep knowledge and strong communication meets entrepreneurial spirit, where flexibility defeats rigid hierarchy, and where knowledge and ethics can become your ultimate competitive weapons.”
Boivin added that while there is “a lot of noise” as AI’s disruptions play out, AiPhelion’s partners are “continually in deep research mode” in order to guide clients. Jury also emphasized a founding principle of the firm: “We believe in rewarding creative labor and in ethical tech enhancing, not replacing, creative work,” he said. “Our use of cutting-edge tech amplifies human insight, making it more efficient, not replacing it.”
