With just some phrases, AI fashions might be prompted to create a narrative, a picture, or perhaps a brief movie. However in keeping with Weber Wong, these fashions are all “made by non-creatives for different non-creatives to really feel inventive.”
In different phrases, they’re not constructed for precise inventive professionals. That’s one thing Wong is hoping to alter with Flora, a brand new startup the place he’s founder and CEO.
Flora launched this week, full with a manifesto declaring that “AI inventive instruments must be greater than toys for producing AI slop” and describing Wong and his staff as “obsessive about constructing an influence device that can profoundly form the way forward for inventive work.”
The manifesto positions Flora as one thing totally different from current AI instruments, which “make it simple to create, however lack inventive management,” and from current inventive software program, which supplies customers “management, however are unintuitive & time-consuming.”
Flora isn’t making an attempt to construct higher generative AI fashions. Wong argued that one of many startup’s key insights is that “fashions are usually not inventive instruments.” So as a substitute, Flora presents an “infinite canvas” that integrates with current fashions — it’s a visible interface the place customers can generate blocks of textual content, photos, and video.
“The mannequin doesn’t matter, the know-how doesn’t matter,” Wong informed me “It’s concerning the interface.”
For instance, a person may begin by prompting Flora to create a picture of a flower, then ask for particulars concerning the picture, with these particulars resulting in extra prompts and diverse photos, with every step and variation mapped out on the aforementioned canvas, which may also be shared for collaborative work with shoppers.
Wong informed me he desires Flora to be helpful to any and all artists and creatives, however the firm is initially centered on working with visible design businesses. In truth, it’s iterating on the product with suggestions from designers at famed company Pentagram.
The purpose, Wong mentioned, is to permit a designer at Pentagram to “simply do 100X extra inventive work,” say by making a emblem design after which shortly producing 100 variations. He in contrast it to the evolution of musical composition — the place Mozart “wanted a whole orchestra to play his music,” a musician right now can get all of it accomplished “from his storage in New Jersey with Ableton, making it himself and posting it on SoundCloud.”
Wong has a background in each artwork and know-how himself, having labored as an investor at Menlo Ventures however leaving when he realized, “I used to be not the individual I’d again.” Decided to turn out to be the sort of founder value investing in, he ultimately joined New York College’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, a graduate program centered on utilizing know-how to create artwork.
When Flora launched an alpha model in August, Wong determined to “launch with an artwork mission that showcased our real-time AI know-how,” with the Flora homepage displaying a reside feed from a GoPro digicam on Wong’s head, and web site guests getting the chance to make use of AI to stylize the footage after signing up for the Flora waitlist.
Given his background, Wong is aware of there are artists and professionals who’re skeptical and even vehemently against using AI in artwork — the truth is, Pentagram generated some controversy final 12 months when it used Midjourney to create the illustration type for a mission with the US authorities.
Wong mentioned that the place current fashions have been embraced by “AI natives,” he’s hoping Flora can win over the “AI curious,” and ultimately even turn out to be helpful sufficient that even “AI haters” really feel they’ve to provide it a strive.
After I raised issues that AI fashions might be skilled with out regard for copyright and mental property, Wong famous that Flora isn’t coaching any AI fashions itself (as a result of it’s utilizing different corporations’ fashions), including, “We are going to comply with societal requirements.”
And whereas he’s captivated with not wanting Flora for use to unleash a flood of AI slop (“We’re going to get hats that say ‘anti-AI slop’”), he advised that as a substitute, the startup will enable artists to unlock “new aesthetic and inventive prospects,” in the identical manner Kodak’s Brownie digicam reworked images by making it extra informal and accessible.
Flora isn’t disclosing funding particulars, however its backers embody A16Z Video games. The product is on the market without spending a dime with a restricted variety of tasks and generated content material, after which skilled pricing begins at $16 per thirty days.
