How This Palestinian Startup Uses Images to Shatter Arab Stereotypes

With interest in AI growing rapidly across the globe, especially after the launch of ChatGPT in November last year, Palestinian-based startup The Middle Frame wanted to use it to reduce bias and shatter stereotypes of the Arab world through its stock imagery platform. Founded in 2022 by Mohammad Alnobani and Raya Fatayer, The Middle Frame works alongside advertising agencies, news outlets and AI companies to provide authentic images from across the MENA region on everything from news to entertainment and sports events.

“Because I worked in advertising, we continuously looked for authentic Arabic images to use for commercial or editorial purposes, and we struggled to find such photos,” Mohamed Alnobani, who worked as an advertising professional before becoming Co-Founder and CEO of The Middle Frame, tells StartupScene. “So, we thought we could solve this. We could provide the world with authentic Arabic images that are crowdsourced from photojournalists from the Arab region.”

Today, the young startup works with photojournalists in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and aims to increase its reach to the rest of the MENA region by next year. It is also gearing up to launch a new product by Q1 2024 to facilitate image requests between news agencies and photographers.

CHANGING DIRECTION

Although a young startup, The Middle Frame had to pivot soon after launching. Instead of focusing on its commercial arm as planned, it changed direction to focus on its editorial vertical, since it was more profitable.

“Like most startups, the first year is the most challenging, where you need to decide what to focus on most,” Alnobani shares. “For us to grow the commercial vertical, it needed a lot of investments, a lot of time, and a lot of effort. You need a huge library of hundreds of thousands of images for all clients to be satisfied with, in order to have them purchase the packages and subscribe to the platform. Whereas when it comes to the editorial, it’s instant. We know this event is happening, the media is talking about it, we want to cover it.”

So far, this strategy has proven to be successful. The Middle Frame currently works with news agencies in the region, and recently signed with Picture Alliance, a media agency based in Germany.

But while the startup is making strides growing its editorial arm, its AI component has been slow to kick off. Alnobani states that the platform still needs to collect a lot more data from the region to create a more accurate representation of the Arab world.

“AI is the most challenging, because we need to collect a lot of data from the Arab world,” he says. “The image generators internationally cannot really generate Arab images properly, due to the lack of data. So, we go back to square one, and that’s why The Middle Frame is there, to provide images from the Arab world.”

Regardless, the startup has partnered with an AI company in the US to provide them with images, and produce data sets. “AI is the future, but it is not now,” he says. “It is something that we always have in our minds, but the focus currently is editorial.”

OVERCOMING VENTURE FUNDING SLOWDOWN

While the company’s launch came at a time when AI was peaking, investor interest was still dampened given the global funding slowdown. According to Crunchbase, companies categorised as AI raised $25 billion in the first half of 2023, representing 18% of global funding, down from $29 billion invested during the same period last year. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, startups raised $770 million in the first half of the year, compared to an estimated $1.52 billion during the same period last year, according to data platform Magnitt.

“Funding is usually challenging for most startups in the region,” says Alnobani. “Unfortunately, we have a lack of funding for the very early stage startups. However, we were lucky that we were able to raise funds early on, which helped us with licensing the images on our platform.”

In November 2023, the startup managed to raise over $100K from Flat6Labs Amman, where Alnobani is currently residing since the war broke out in Gaza in October 2023. The funding will be used to launch new features on the platform, grow traction, and increase revenue.

Despite the gloomy funding climate, Alnobani is confident that his startup fills a much-needed market gap in the media, especially at a time when the world is paying close attention to events in the Middle East. “The new technology today, generative AI, provides us with datasets for machine learning,” he says. “But because there is bias in AI in the Arab world, all the results that come out are foreign, and often westernised. Our data helps reduce the bias in that sense.”

As the startup gears for next year, it is aiming to reach 3,500 photographers from 12 different countries in the region, and signing more global partnerships. “We aim to make an impact in the region. To give more freedom to photographers, to take more images and videos, and to upload them on trusted, regulated and ethical platforms, so that we can show our reality to the world.”