I Think I Know Why Colin Kaepernick Sells AI Slop To Children

Colin Kaepernick has been on a media mega tour promoting his new memoir The Perilous Fight. I’ve enjoyed the engaging discussions with him on various TV shows and podcasts, from The Daily Show to The Ringer’s Higher Learning. You’ll find genuinely illuminating discussions about his racial justice activism, his playing career, his beef with Jay-Z, and his perspective on the NFL ten years since taking a knee. But he’s rarely asked about his post-football day job: selling his AI comic book generator to public schools: many of them in poor, majority-Black communities with struggling literacy rates.

One might hope that this literacy app would not have its own issues with literacy.

One might hope.

If there’s one thing eyeblack is gonna do, it’s ask the question nobody else will. Especially when its about a product in public schools dependent on public money, which means its plainly in the public interest. So I spent time carefully explaining what we know about Kaepernick, his startup stealth pivot from the creator economy to classrooms. Soon, I’ll be expounding on what Lumi has delivered to the districts he works with, what he’s already extracting from class.

But with one difference: this time I told this story from my YouTube channel, @watcheyeblack.

Some stories deserve and demand a complimentary way of keeping your eye on the ball that I can’t fully capture on the newsletter. Kaepernick’s edutech escapades is one of those stories.

Just like readeyeblack dot com, clicking subscribe on @watcheyeblack is completely free. But, also just like this newsletter, growing my subscriber list is a crucial part of reaching people with eyeblack’s distinctive accountability-oriented sports journalism, so I hope you’ll not only read and share, but like and subscribe.

Somewhat different from the newsletter are the ways a visual storytelling mechanism can expand and contextualize the reporting, while also providing a fresh angle into my process for discovering, researching, confirming, and when needed, confronting issues worth understanding.

Now, while I’m no stranger to showing up on camera, it’s not my first ministry. I’m ok with that! Because eyeblack will always serve readers at heart. But, I've also spent this year considering when a written story deserves to be seen and heard, and the last month teaching myself how to tell those narratives in ways that compliment the keystrokes.

Here’s an example. In this video, Colin Kaepernick Is Selling AI Slop To Children, I dissected Lumi’s 2024 origin story as a VC-backed genAI graphic novel maker that specialized in manga-style renderings that can fuel individual creators to become Walt Disney.

I’m still a journalist. Child literacy, school equity, consumer protection, and transparent dealing between the public and private sector are serious matters. But as an anime and animation fan, I’m able to have fun with Kaepernick’s weebish founder story differently than I would on the page.

I’m excited to give you a different glimpse at the man behind the keyboard: even nerdier when seen and heard.

There’s so much more here. I have obtained literal thousands of emails since the start of the summer between Kaepernick and his school partners, which has grown since we last published to, by our count, 15 active partnerships ¹across the country. And I want you to see what I, as a reporter, am seeing in these documents.

This is where we’d typically share more detail and key takeaways and fresh reporting. But this, time, I’ll end here, where you’ll have to occasionally look at my face.

Which if I can be so bold, is much better than looking at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Lumi edition.)