A new startup is betting that consumers will be willing to sell their personal data directly to artificial intelligence companies instead of allowing technology platforms and data brokers to profit from it for free. Verb, a data exchange platform, unveiled a marketplace that enables users to monetize selected personal information by selling it directly to businesses, including AI developers looking for fresh training data. The launch also highlights the growing debate over privacy and ownership of personal information in the AI era. The concept of paying consumers directly for their personal information is not entirely new, although previous efforts have struggled to gain widespread adoption. Startup Vana, which emerged from research at MIT, allows users to pool their personal data and collectively decide which organizations can use it for AI training, while recruiting platform Mercor pays experts to generate and evaluate AI training data.