Movio offers an artificial intelligence platform that automatically creates marketing videos from simple text. Now based in California, the Chinese startup hopes to seduce marketers the world over by letting them create innovative content very easily…
Throughout 2022, generative artificial intelligence experienced a boom dazzling. Thanks to “text-to-image” algorithms from groups such as OpenAI and Stability AI, it is now possible to create artistic images by entering a simple textual description.
Many impressive works of art have been generated by AI in this way, and one even won a competition in Colorado. Tools such as MidJourney and DALL-E 2 are used by graphic artists, designers, illustrators and even architects.
A new wave of startups are now seeking to develop for this new type of language model, enabling machines to create text, images or video from human input.
Movio creates videos of talking avatars from simple texts
One such startup is Movio. Founded two years ago, it uses generative AI and other machine learning frameworks such as GANs (generative adversarial networks) to create videos featuring talking human avatars.
His platform is aimed primarily at marketerswith a drag-and-drop interface similar to that of Canva. Users can choose between different templates, depending on the use case. For example, a theme for a shopping site or for a trip to Japan.
You can then add a hyper-realistic avatar as “spokesperson. His speech is generated by text entered by the user. The character’s clothes, face and voice can be modified with a single click.
The number of Movio users has now reached several hundred thousand. Approximately a thousand of these are paying customers. The company has raised $9 million from investors such as IDG, Sequoia Capital China, and more recently Baidu Ventures.
A startup created by TikTok and Snapchat veterans
The CEO Josh Xu and CPO Liang Wangthe two co-founders of Movio, have been met at Carnegie Mellon University during their studies. Previously, Liang Xang worked on the music social network Smule, and for the ByteDance company that owns TikTok. For his part, Josh Xu worked for six years as an engineer at Snapchat.
Initially based in Shenzhen, China’s electronics hardware capital and e-commerce, Movio had previously made a name for itself with a tool for creating deepfake videos. Its platform was used by online merchants to create promotional videos narrated by synthetic humans.
Now based in Los AngelesMovio aims to attract American marketers who want to harness AI for their work. According to the startup, videos offer unlimited possibilities for marketing. In particular, its goal is to enable marketers to send emails containing talking avatars rather than text.
For now, Movio can only synthesize talking heads. However, the company is working to enable its algorithms to generate full-body movements. This development will bring it closer to its goal of creating a ” all-in-one AI video production platform “.
The price of generated videos depends on their lengthcalculated according to the length of the script provided by the user. Additional charges are added for customers who require personalized faces. This option is particularly popular for corporate training videos.
In parallel, Movio has also opened its API to third-party websites. Some are already using its engine to create customer service avatars.
After the boom in text-to-image tools, text-to-video platforms are shaping up to be the next phenomenon. In addition to Movio, several tech giants have presented their video-generating AIs, including Google Imagen Video and Meta Make A Video…