🎥 Video generation is available now

ALSO: New State of AI report and text-to-3D models

Estimated Read Time: 5 minutes

AI video generation will change media forever. But the tech is still early and premature, with the best models yet to fully release anything. Well… until now. Runway just released Gen-3 Alpha publicly, though there’s some caveats with the release.

• 🎥 Runway opens access to video generation.

• 🗣️ ElevenLabs releases “Iconic” voices.

• 📈 The State of AI in 2024.

• 😮 Meta releases text-to-3D AI model.

🎥 Runway opens access to video generation

What happened: Runway just announced that their Gen-3 Alpha model, capable of generating videos, is now publicly available.

The details: 

• Gen-3 Alpha is a text-to-video AI model. Much like OpenAI’s highly anticipated Sora.

• Runway revealed the impressive model last month to “oohs” and “ahs”. The preview videos are really impressive. Check out their trailer.

• Among the top features are better character and scene consistency, and better scene transitions.

• Access to Gen-3 is locked behind a $12 per month subscription. It gives you just 63 seconds of video generation per month. 🫠

Why it matters: This is the most impressive video generation we’ve seen yet. Up there with Sora and possibly surpassing it. But the tiny amount of generation per month seriously limits Gen-3 Alpha to the realm of “for testing purposes only” for now.

📱 Google’s Pixel 9 has been leaked. According to the leaks Google will reveal the Pixel 9 on August 13th, two months ahead of schedule. There will be a pink model and the return of the Pixel Fold. It’ll also have Gemini’s AI features, a larger display and battery, and a new flat frame design. Let’s find out if the leaks are accurate.

🤖 Claude recently released their “Artifacts” feature. Basically it transforms AI responses into interactive, editable outputs like code snippets, documents, websites, images, and more. It’s a pretty big feature, and we’ll be doing a deep dive into Artifacts soon.

🗣️ ElevenLabs releases “Iconic” voices

What happened: ElevenLabs has partnered with the estates of several old stars to bring their “iconic” voices to their new Reader App. Basically it’ll read text aloud using those iconic voices.

The details:

• The app converts text files into AI powered audio voiceovers.

• The AI voices are “emotionally aware”, meaning the voices sound more natural and, uh, emotional. ElevenLabs claims the AI is context aware.

• The app is available right now.

• The recreated voices of Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds, and Sir Laurence Olivier are some of the available voices.

• The estates of the iconic stars gave their full support to ElevenLabs.

• Here’s a neat example: You can listen to “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” voiced by Judy Garland or “Sherlock Holmes” narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier. (Pretty sweet.)

Why it matters: AI voices are coming to another level. Soon most audiobooks, animations, and games will be AI voiced. I suggest trying the feature out. It’ll give you a glimpse of what’s to come as the tech gets better.

📈 The State of AI in 2024

What happened: Retool has released their latest state of AI report. Here’s a breakdown of the most interesting tidbits. (You can read the full report here.)

The details: 

• AI has a moderate adoption rate with 70% of companies reporting increased productivity from AI tools.

• OpenAI’s tools remain the most popular followed by proprietary models custom built for the business.

• AI tools are most frequently used by Product (45%) and Engineering (42%) teams.

• The two biggest concerns respondents have are ethics and regulations. (Pretty obvious.)

• 27% of respondents secretly use AI at work. 👀 Their workplaces are mostly unclear about AI usage and haven’t made any attempt to use/ban AI.

• 55% of responders have either built an AI chatbot or their company has.

Takeaway: The world is changing with AI, but maybe not as quickly as people expect. Companies will need AI, but they’re taking a slow approach to find out AI’s utility and how to establish workflows. If you’re company doesn’t already use AI, then get ahead of the curve by using AI on your own.

😮 Meta releases text-to-3D AI model

What happened: Meta just released a tool which can generate 3D meshes and texture them in under a minute.

The details:

• It’s called 3DGen and generates fully textured 3D meshes capable of Physically Based Rendering (PBR) from text prompts.

• Unlike most other 3D generating tools, the underlying mesh (PBR) created with 3DGen allows the model to be used in real modeling and application.

• The generation is split into two parts; the creation of the 3D mesh and the texturing. This utilizes two separate generative models, AssetGen and TextureGen respectively.

• Splitting the generation gives the user more control. If you like a mesh but hate the texture, just have 3DGen generation a new texture without destroying the mesh.

• Meta claims the modeling process can be 60x faster than a professional 3D artist. I’d say that’s an understatement.

Takeaway: The benefits are clear. In the future, AI will handle the creation of 3D assets for movies, animations, and games. As technology advances in speed and accuracy, smaller companies will gain access to effortlessly produced custom 3D assets. However, this shift will mean that 3D artists may face reduced roles, primarily focusing on editing AI-generated assets rather than creating them.

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Source: Midjourney

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