Introduction:
The excitement surrounding generative AI is still intense. For instance, Pika, a startup specializing in an AI-powered platform for video creation from images and text, recently announced securing $55 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Notable angel investors involved in this venture include Adam D’Angelo, the founder of Quora; Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub; and Alex Chung, co-founder of Giphy.
This latest funding coincides with the early access launch of Pika 1.0, an innovative suite of video editing tools featuring a generative AI model capable of producing videos in various styles like “3D animation,” “anime,” and “cinematic.” Pika emerged from stealth mode just six months ago.
In a blog entry posted on its website this morning, Pika states, “Video is at the heart of entertainment, yet the process of making high-quality videos to date is still complicated and resource-intensive.” “We intended to push the limits of technology and create an easy-to-use, future interface for video creation that would be available to everyone when we founded Pika six months ago. Since then, the Pika community has expanded to include half a million users, producing millions of films every week, something we’re proud of.
Demi Guo and Chenlin Meng, two former PhD candidates at Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, co-founded Pika. Meng co-authored multiple AI research publications, including some on generative AI, and Guo worked as an engineer at Meta’s AI research section before attending Stanford.
Pika faces competition from models and generative AI video tools from companies like Runway and Stability AI. With Pika 1.0, however, Pika hopes to step it up with a few unique features.
For instance, Pika 1.0 comes with an instrument that can increase the duration of already-existing films, change their style from “live-action” to “animated,” or increase the aspect ratio or canvas size of a video. Another module uses AI to edit video content, such as introducing new characters or altering someone’s attire.
Once Pika 1.0 is generally accessible, we’ll have to test such capabilities. In any case, Lightspeed, an investor in Stability AI, is also confident in the platform, despite the fact that major tech companies like Google and Meta have hinted that they are also developing generative AI tools for video.
Pika, Which is Building AI Tools to Generate and Edit Videos:
Pika, Which is Building AI Tools to Generate and Edit Videos [Source of Image: Techcrunch.com]
According to a news release from Lightspeed, Michael Mignano stated, “We think Pika will lead that transformation.” With their remarkable technological background and early love of art, the Pika team appears set to revolutionize the way we all tell our stories through images. We at Lightspeed are happy to invest with other incredible investors at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI). We are thrilled to support Lightspeed’s aim of enabling anybody to bring their creative vision to life through video.
Pika’s quick expansion indicates the persistently high demand for generative AI in all its forms, from ChatGPT to DALL-E 3 and Midjourney tools.
In a recent analysis, IDC predicted that investments in generative AI will reach a staggering $143 billion by 2027, up from $16 billion this year. Even though generative AI will only make up 9% of all AI spending in 2023, the company projects that percentage to rise to 28% in only five years.
Spending may be warranted. A recent survey, however limited to users in the United Kingdom, revealed that Gen Z is adopting generative AI. Four out of five (79%) teenagers between 13 and 17 said they had used productive AI tools, apps, and services, such as ChatGPT and Snapchat’s My AI.
However, Gen Zers may not be paying for generative AI. Additionally, some forms of technology are proving challenging to install for commercial customers with the most significant budgets to spend on them.
According to O’Reilly’s 2023 generative AI in the enterprise report, a significant portion of corporate AI adopters (26%) are still in the early phases of generative AI pilots and are highly concerned about the possible drawbacks of the technology, including unexpected consequences, security, safety, fairness, bias, and privacy. According to the paper, generative AI is being held back by poorly thought out and executed AI solutions, a lack of business use cases, and legal considerations (such as copyright ownership over AI-generated work).
