Eros Innovation (Eros) is an AI-driven media and technology company combining entertainment IP, digital infrastructure, cultural AI models and creative economy platforms. The company has a substantial content base, including a film library, AI-ready characters, music and cultural datasets, alongside UK production, gaming, health and education ambitions.
The current generative AI landscape creates two related challenges:
- Many models rely on poorly evidenced data which may have been used without a clear lawful basis, authorisation, source linkage, provenance or declared purpose. This makes it difficult for creators, estates, archives and rights holders to know whether their work has been used, how value is generated and how compensation flows back.
- At the same time, increasingly convincing AI generated cultural outputs require stronger ways to verify whether a voice, character, performance, image, music or film asset is authentic, licensed and culturally accurate.
Eros wants rights-aware cultural AI models trained on lawful, certified and culturally appropriate data, with transparent infrastructure that protects creators, sustains value and builds confidence in synthetic or AI assisted content.
Entrants to this competition must be established businesses, academic institutions, start-ups, SMEs, or individual entrepreneurs, who are UK-based or intending to set-up a UK base.
The solution must not:
- use data without a clear lawful basis, authorisation, source linkage, provenance or declared purpose
- undermine creators’ rights, compensation opportunities or control over their work
- require confidential IP disclosure in the initial application
- be a generic content-generation tool without a clear attribution, provenance, authenticity or rights-management component
- increase environmental impacts through avoidable high-compute workflows
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Entrants to this competition must be:
- Established businesses, academic institutions, start-ups, SMEs, or individual entrepreneurs
- UK-based or intending to set-up a UK base
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Challenge 1: AI attributions, provenance and compensation
Solutions that record, verify and communicate origin, rights status, permitted use and value flow for creative content and datasets used in AI pipelines. Approaches may include metadata, content provenance, licensing verification, creator payment mechanisms, watermarking, distributed ledger approaches, adult trials, or interoperability with attribution standards (this is not an exhaustive list).
Challenge 2: AI authenticity and persona infrastructure
Solutions that verify or maintain the authenticity of AI-generated or AI-assisted cultural outputs, including likeness, voices, characters, performances, songs, films and transmedia assets. Solutions should help identify whether content is licensed, authorised, culturally consistent and generated from appropriate datasets.
Solutions to both challenges may be broad or targeted, but should offer a credible short pilot route across creative content types such as film, music, image, video, character IP and cultural datasets.
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Functional Requirements
The solution(s) should:
- Support attribution/provenance/compensation and/or authenticity/persona verification.
- Apply to creative workflows such as AI model training, rights management, character or voice generation, release, distribution or reuse.
- Provide clear evidence of rights, permissions, provenance, licensing status or authenticity for Eros, creators, rights holders, platforms and/or partners.
- Work across content types such as video, music, image, voice, character assets, scripts or cultural datasets.
- Demonstrate a credible pilot pathway with clear success measures.
Technical Requirements
The solution(s) should:
- Use ethical data and avoid using data without a clear lawful basis, authorisation, source linkage, provenance or declared purpose.
- Support traceability of creative assets model inputs, rights status and/or generated outputs.
- Protect sensitive creative assets and commercially valuable IP.
- Focus on ideas in development (TRL 6-8) but Eros will consider solutions in early R&D through to commercially ready products.
- Where relevant, interoperate with provenance, attribution, watermarking, identity, rights-management or distributed ledger approaches.
- Consider sustainability, including efficient compute use, model routing, token efficiency or reduced unnecessary high-energy processing.
Operating Conditions
The solution(s) should:
- Operate where assets may be commercially sensitive, rights-protected and subject to licensing restrictions.
- Be suitable for testing with Eros and UK collaborators, with initial pilots focused on UK solution providers.
- Support cross-border cultural contexts where sovereign data, local culture, licensing and trusted exchange may matter.
- Avoid requiring disclosure of unnecessary confidential IP at application stage.
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Successful applicants will be invited to pitch to Eros Innovation and Innovate UK Business Connect. Selected solution(s) may be trialled through short pilots, with potential for further adoption, licensing, partnership, commercial engagement or investment if successful.
The benefits package may include:
- Support from Innovate UK Business Connect through the iX process.
- The opportunity to work with one of India’s biggest entertainment and AI companies.
- Access to Eros Innovation’s creative, AI and commercial teams to scope a focused pilot.
- Opportunity to demonstrate technology in cultural AI, rights-aware content and synthetic media authenticity use cases.
- Potential collaboration with a challenge holder active in film, music, AI models, transmedia characters and creative economy infrastructure.
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- Launch of the Competition: 06 Oct 2026
- Q&A session: 28th Oct 2026 (tbc)
- Deadline for applications: 13 Nov 2026
- Selection and notification of finalists: 04 Dec 2026
- Date of Pitch Day: late Dec/early Jan (tbc)
- Pilot scoping: following pitch day and selection of preferred solution provider(s)
- Pilot duration: expected to be approximately 3 months (Feb-May), subject to agreed scope and commercial arrangements
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