Published on: March 10, 2024
In a recent interview with SafetyDetectives, Brian Looney, the Chief Revenue Officer at Huski.AI, discussed his role leading sales, marketing, and customer success efforts while collaborating on product development. Huski.AI was inspired by market gaps identified by its founders, pivoting from aiding online sellers to assisting rights holders in trademark protection. Brian, with over 16 years of experience in brand protection and trademark services, brings valuable expertise to Huski’s mission of leveraging AI-native technology to transform the industry. He emphasized the benefits of AI-powered solutions in trademark protection, highlighting the empowerment of clients and legal professionals through control and collaborative capabilities.
Can you introduce yourself and talk about your role at Huski.ai?
My name is Brian Looney and I am the Chief Revenue Officer at Huski.AI. Huski is an AI-native SaaS solution to solve everything trademark related. By official role, I lead the sales, marketing, and customer success efforts for the company as well as liaise with the product team on product development. As an emerging growth company I often wear a lot of other hats too.
What inspired the creation of Huski.ai, and what specific challenges or gaps in the market does it aim to address?
It’s a great question because it is precisely the gaps in the market that inspired Huski, albeit in a non-linear way. My co-founders Henry and Guan were working together at another company on A.I. models for autonomous driving when a lawyer they knew asked them if AI could help solve some trademark-related matters his clients were encountering. Those problems were these clients actually being sued for suspected counterfeiting or other IP infringement. They worked on a model that originally would help online sellers avoid selling infringing products by proactively identifying any U.S. trademarks found in their product images. And as one might expect, the sellers didn’t care to pay for a service like this so they had to pivot. They quickly realized that rights holders would also be interested in a product like this, and this is when I came on board to help expand this effort.
I am a 16+ year veteran of the online brand protection and trademark services sector having led sales efforts for a few companies over the years, while technically still being in the same job. Companies I worked for were acquired 3 different times over these years. After the last one it was time for me to get back to building something new and addressing the gaps I have seen in the market over my tenure. Our mission is to change what has historically been a tech-enabled services solution and transform this with AI-native technology. We want the tech to do the vast majority of the work that all of our competitors do using armies of inexperienced, offshore labor. We are also addressing parts of the problem that have been ignored by other providers, which I will keep to myself for the time being so that we can still sneak past them.
What are the key benefits of utilizing AI-powered solutions in trademark protection for both legal professionals and their clients?
First and foremost, they get control back. The industry has been an outsourced offering since its inception because the technology was simply not yet available to make something “self-service” that a client would actually be able to use. Outsourcing also allowed the providers to mask their tech deficiencies and not be discovered that what they mostly do is a manual effort. But outsourcing means that the brands and their outside counsels – an already trusted partner – were cut out of the process and had to rely on what the vendors told/tell them. With Huski, our clients are in control. And we have a solution that is also built for legal professionals to collaborate with their clients on matters such as litigation and much more.
What ethical considerations should legal professionals keep in mind when integrating AI into their practice?
The big one here is to not completely rely on the machine to make decisions for you. The AI is there to help boil the ocean so to speak, and reduce what is a massive amount of information into actionable results, but those results and any actions that take place should be reviewed, confirmed and done by a human. The legal precedents are not yet there to allow for machine-only enforcement. AI is not foolproof, but it’s extremely helpful in getting you 95% of the way there.
What are some common misconceptions about AI’s role in the legal industry, and how would you address them?
That it’s a fix-all for everything, or on the other side of the argument that it is harmful to the practice of law. The way to address these concerns is through education and hands-on experience. AI in its current state is another tool in the toolchest to make things faster and easier. AI will not replace the need for lawyers, nor will it replace the need for lawyers to write. It’s just a tool to help things like template creation and to process vast amounts of data to help steer one onto the right path. Think of the vast majority of law books, case data, legal briefs, IP filings, etc. The role AI can play is summarize that vast of amount of data and information and you closer to answers you need.
What excites you most about the future of AI in the legal industry, and where do you see the greatest potential for innovation and impact?
I can only really comment on what my little niche area of the legal industry might have instore, but I see AI revolutionizing the way we process information. Counterfeiters continue to evolve their approach and I believe AI will catch up to them and allow us to adapt to their changing strategies in near real-time. We will likely be able to predict what they will do next and build defensive strategies to stop it faster. That really excites me.