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Former NFL Quarterback Coliin Kaepernick Promotes His Lumi AI Platform in Newark
Colin Kaepernick has been known for standing up — or taking a knee — for racial injustice since he led fellow NFL players in protesting police brutality in 2016 by kneeling while the National Anthem played.
Nearly a decade later, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, author, publisher and tech entrepreneur is focused on boosting opportunity for aspiring young storytellers with an artificial intelligence platform for transforming story ideas into graphic novels.
Kaepernick was in Newark on Thursday for a presentation by students of two city high schools who had used his platform, Lumi AI, to create novels in comic book form based on plot lines, characters, contextual elements, and historical or other details they had conceived, researched and entered into the platform.
“Let’s hear it for the students,” Kaepernick told several hundred of their classmates, teachers and administrators gathered Thursday afternoon in the gym at Weequahic High School in Newark’s South Ward.
“Seeing students’ work come to life, it’s incredible,” added Kaepernick, 37, his 6-foot 4-inch frame draped with the tech founder’s uniform of suit jacket and T-shirt.
“I never had the opportunity to do something like this growing up,” he added. “It took me a lot of years to see my stories start to come to life. And we now have that opportunity for our students to lead the way in what the narrative is to them, their lives, what it looks like for our communities.”
Kaepernick launched Lumi in July, backed by tech investors Seven Seven Six, Kapor Capital and Impellent Ventures.
Apart from commercial services that include analysis of data sets for users who don’t know computer code, the company aimed to “democratize storytelling tools for creators to turn their ideas into finished products, as well as distributing and merchandising those stories — transforming any creator into Disney,” an announcement at the time said.
“By leveraging advanced AI tools,” it added, “Lumi enhances the creative process, allowing creators to focus on bringing their stories to life while the platform handles all of the logistics.”
The Newark Public Schools program, one of the first to partner with Lumi AI, is overseen by Assistant Superintendent Maria Ortiz, with the support of Superintendent Roger León.
Thursday’s event included presentations by 10 students from the district’s Weequahic and Malcolm X Shabazz high schools. They talked about their sources of inspiration, background materials, characters’ motivations, relationships, looks and other traits, and how Lumi helped them turn those elements into a graphic novel — essentially a novel in comic book form.
Koasisochuckwu Adibe, a Weequahic senior known as Kossy, authored “Accepting Ralu,” about a girl without the idealized body type typical of popular media who, atypically, experiences romantic love.
“In comics and movies I often watched, I never saw someone who looked like me being truly loved without having to change how she looked, dressed or acted,” Adibe explained. “I wanted a character like me to be seen and cherished, not just by friends and family but also by a love interest.”
Shabazz student Jabari Dawes’ presentation opened with an image of his anti-hero on a large video screen behind the temporary stage set up for the event, allowing students to project the colorful illustrations generated by Lumi based on descriptions entered by the student users.
The gaunt figure was dressed in rags with chilling white eyes that had no pupils.
“Here lies the embodiment of poverty,” said Dawes. “Poverty is a person who is wreaking havoc on society, from attacking the family as a whole to attacking individual children and men.”
“Not only is the message important, the platform is equally important,” Dawes added. “The impact of Lumi is unprecedented in my life because not only did it allow me to develop a voice for my concerns, it allowed me to indulge in my creativity realistically.”
Annika Chime Riches’ STEM-themed book was intended to demonstrate that “even the messiest experiments can lead to valuable lessons.”
Jaylis Gomez’s project was a historical graphic novel set in the court of Louis XVI during the French Revolution, centered around a fictional daughter of Marie Antoinette.
“She escapes with Stephen, reflecting the real fears and survival instincts of nobles during this tumultuous period,” Gomez said, referring to a male character. “Lumi helped me find my voice as a writer.”
Weequahic senior Angiely Osorio gave her presentation in Spanish and English.
“It was really fun to see how my imagination could turn into something visual,” Osario said. “This helped me learn how the tools worked and gave me confidence to create something better.”
Each author was cheered by several hundred classmates sitting in the gym’s bleachers, with faculty and guests at tables on the hardwood floor.
They included the Newark Board of Education President Hasani Council. Despite criticism of artificial intelligence that it can perpetuate societal biases, steal intellectual property, and eliminate jobs humans used to do, Council said Newark’s Lumi AI program “can show that AI isn’t all bad.”
The event had the look and feel of a pitch competition for tech company founders, with a DJ providing a hip-hop soundtrack and even a break in the presentations when students and adults danced on the stage.
“We appreciate that energy, Newark, we need that,” Shabazz senior Romelo Tables, the school’s valedictorian, varsity quarterback and a co-host of the event, told the crowd.
Tables will attend and play football for Central Connecticut State University on a full scholarship this fall. Tables later said Kaepernick was an inspiration as much for his activism as his accomplishments on the field, which were considerable during a brief heyday of his two full seasons unhampered by injury or controversy.
When Tables had a chance to talk to the former pro-QB that afternoon, he didn’t ask for tips about reading a defense or scrambling out of the pocket.
“Not in terms of playing,” he said of their talk. “More about morality and how to have a positive impact on the world outside of football. That’s a little bit more important right now for the world.”
Despite Kaepernick’s standout performances in 2013 and 2014, when he signed a multi-year deal with San Francisco worth up to $126 million, his six-year professional career ended with the 2016 season, the year he began kneeling in protest.
The Milwaukee native and University of Nevada star opted out of his 49ers contract in early 2017 and wasn’t signed as a free agent. The lack of offers stoked widespread suspicion that team owners had blackballed him, and Kaepernick later filed a collusion lawsuit against the NFL, which he and the league settled in 2019 for an undisclosed sum.
Since his playing days, Kaepernick has authored, co-authored or edited several books, including his own graphic novel, Change the Game, with Eve L. Ewing, a semi-autobiographical work in 2023. In 2019, he founded Kaepernick Publishing, which focuses on works by him and other authors of color. He has also been the subject of several books.
At the time of his protests, Kaepernick was criticized as being unpatriotic, disrespectful to veterans, and “bad for business.”
Kaepernick was later honored for his activism by Harvard University, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, and other mainstream institutions.
Heading out of the gym on Thursday, Kaepernick said seeing young storytellers make use of his new AI tool was one of his greatest satisfactions.
“I love seeing students succeed,” he said. “I love seeing our communities being successful.”
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Steve Strunsky may be reached atsstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com