Canadian Generative AI Animation Begin-Up Viggle AI Raises $19 Million
Whereas a lot of the animation trade stays deeply involved about the usage of generative AI within the discipline, tech buyers proceed to pour cash into the burgeoning sector.
Toronto, Canada-based start-up Viggle AI, which is targeted on character animation by generative AI, introduced at the moment that it has raised $19 million in Collection A funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from further investor Two Small Fish.
Right here’s a take a look at what the corporate is doing:
- Viggle AI’s worth proposition is to simplify the animation course of by permitting customers to create lifelike animation utilizing text-to-video or image-to-video prompts. It makes use of the proprietary JST-1 expertise, which is a video-3d basis mannequin that’s constructed with an understanding of physics, enabling the creation of practical character actions. An instance will be seen under, wherein Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker persona replaces video footage of rapper Lil Yachty:
Viggle AI Experiment 💙
That is an unbelievable software for fashion switch.
Particulars and hyperlink to Discord under 👇
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- The brand new spherical of funding will allow Viggle AI to proceed to scale, speed up product growth, broaden its group, and construct its enterprise round controllable video technology and AI animation. The corporate’s group on Discord at present has 4 million members.
- The corporate lately launched the Viggle Creator Program. Members of this program obtain a Viggle Professional subscription, an extra 1,000 credit (equal to 250 minutes of video), early entry to new options, and alternatives to attach with different creators by an unique group channel.
- Viggle AI CEO and co-founder Cling Chu, who has beforehand labored at Autodesk, Fb, and NVIDIA, mentioned in a press release:
We’re excited to welcome a16z and Two Small Fish as companions in our subsequent part of progress. Their funding not solely affirms our imaginative and prescient but additionally empowers us to redefine the probabilities in AI-driven character animation. As extra individuals search to combine AI for a extra fulfilling and accessible artistic course of, Viggle helps seamlessly align shopper demand by combining one of the best methodologies for constructing and scaling AI. We look ahead to increasing the attain of our expertise to an excellent broader viewers and increasing the boundaries of creativity for everybody.
- The corporate has been utilizing “publicly obtainable” knowledge to coach its fashions, and in accordance with founder Chu, its coaching dataset consists of Youtube movies. The legality of the corporate’s enterprise mannequin is in query as Youtube’s person phrases of service don’t enable video harvesting from the platform with out permission from the corporate. Viggle AI disputes that it’s doing something unlawful and mentioned in a statement to Techcrunch: “Viggle leverages a wide range of public sources, together with YouTube, to generate AI content material. Our coaching knowledge has been fastidiously curated and refined, guaranteeing compliance with all phrases of service all through the method. We prioritize sustaining robust relationships with platforms like YouTube, and we’re dedicated to respecting their phrases by avoiding large quantities of downloads and another actions that may contain unauthorized video downloads.”
- Andreessen Horowitz is a outstanding Silicon Valley enterprise capital agency with over $43 billion in belongings beneath administration. The corporate indicated earlier this yr that it was devoted round $2.25 billion to AI infrastructure and utility investments. Justine Moore, associate at Andreessen Horowitz, mentioned about this newest funding: “Viggle AI helps drive a significant shift in how content material creators strategy creation with character and scene consistency. We’ve been impressed with Viggle’s early momentum and the person base it’s already achieved, and we are able to’t wait to see the place their continued innovation will take us.”
- Two Small Fish working associate and co-founder/ex-CEO of Canadian AI-powered storytelling firm Wattpad, Allen Lau added: “Viggle represents the way forward for content material and can upend the leisure trade very similar to Wattpad did. As an advisor, I’ll present steering that’s rooted in my real-life expertise of constructing a worldwide leisure platform from the bottom up. I’m excited to additional disrupt the leisure trade with Viggle and alter how content material is created and remixed within the age of generative AI.”
