Latimer, a large language model tool trained on a corpus of data focused on Black culture and history launched last month, will release a new tool in the coming weeks.
The AI startup, named after inventor Lewis Howard Latimer and affectionately known as “The BlackGPT” is an answer to the bias, lack of cultural competency, and erasure found in popular AI tools like ChatGPT, says Latimer CEO and cofounder John Pasmore. The tool works by accessing ChatGPT’s codebase through an application programming interface (API) and then applies retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), or pulling information from a specialized subset of data, in this case, data specific to Black history, to generate human-like text to users’ queries.
Latimer’s new API will provide users and companies access to their datasets. In addition, it can detect bias. Pasmore said the company has plans to launch about five more products specifically focused on bias detection.
The move-fast, break-things energy in AI created an opportunity for Latimer, Pasmore said.
“The focus was on speed and developing what some consider reasoning capabilities, more so than guardrails, bias, offending anybody, or getting things accurate about certain people. This has created an opportunity for us.”
The company’s content acquisition strategy centers on HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities), partnerships, and licensing deals with Black media and content producers. The lead content czar for Latimer’s database is Temple University’s Molefi Kete Asante, who created the school’s first African American studies Ph.D. program.
“Black and Brown publishers want to both financially benefit from having produced this content but also don’t want the content to be so siloed, that you can only get accurate information from one place, even if it’s Latimer,” Pasmore said.
Latimer first started by partnering, licensing with, and selling to higher education. Increasingly, early commercial uses hold potential, Pasmore said.
“The most frequent request on the commercial side is from marketers, whether it’s brands or agencies, even healthcare or drug companies, that want to speak in a more authentic voice to Black and Brown people,” Pasmore said.
He also said companies’ customer service organizations can use the API to monitor customer communication for bias.
Already, Latimer has partnered with Morgan State to develop a method for detecting bias in AI-generated text. This method is baked into Latimer’s nascent suite of business offerings set to launch after the release of its API.
The company is doing internal testing and establishing a pricing strategy for the API offering scheduled for March. Latimer is free to use for up to 100 message queries per day, then $9.99 a month for full access. Its product rollout strategy will deliberately mirror that of OpenAI in terms of features and functionalities that have proven attractive.
“Our API will likely be priced premium to OpenAI’s 4.0 because we have a unique dataset, that has licensed data and that is valuable to organizations that want to interact with us by API.”
Latimer’s first investor is New York-based investor Esther Dyson, and it’s backed by other private investors, at an undisclosed amount.
Pasmore has a background in finance and is also a partner at TRS Capital. He previously co-founded a video travel platform VoyageTV which raised a $10 million Series A led by Syncom Venture Partners. Pasmore eventually sold the company and went back to school to earn a computer science degree before turning his focus to AI.
He is confident that there is “a billion-dollar opportunity” to address bias in incumbent AI offerings for enterprises.
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