It began like most new companies. Somebody had a nagging drawback that wanted to be solved, however there wasn’t something that would fairly match the social gathering’s wants. When this occurs to most of us—our canines do not sit, our budgets do not steadiness, we do not have the devilish genius to make a bit robotic that butters the toast for us—we both give in and cope with the established order, or we craft an answer. with a irritating set of counter strikes.
Jeremy Tuman, founding father of Augie, shouldn’t be most individuals.
Toeman is a product developer and serial startup founder with a decade of expertise launching media instruments like Sling. He additionally labored for CNET for 3 years within the 2010s. When he needed to place collectively a fast, social-focused piece of video content material to advertise his pandemic-related movie podcast, he realized he had a kind of pesky issues: He isn’t a video producer.
“I am grading about 40 hours of tutorials later, I have never made any progress,” Tuman stated in a Zoom interview.
However Toeman has a sure talent set that makes him a nightmare for upsets. He known as one among his co-founders, Scott Hayward, who has 10 years of expertise working in synthetic intelligence at firms like WarnerMedia, and began troubleshooting.
“I form of known as him and stated, ‘I need to make one thing that listens to my phrases, understands their context, after which robotically matches visuals to them. Are you able to do it?” stated Tuman.
Two years and $4.1 million in seed funding later, Augie is right here, an automatic AI-powered video creation and modifying platform. The platform combines a number of synthetic intelligence instruments in a single browser. Augie is designed to create and create scripts, voiceovers, and movement footage right into a cohesive video utilizing only a single textual content immediate as a place to begin.
This comes amid an explosion of generative AI instruments and their potential to immediately generate textual content, video and audio upon consumer request. Different firms are additionally experimenting with video technology instruments, akin to OpenAI’s Sora, Google’s Lumiere, and Microsoft’s VASA-1. You could find extra ideas, information, and critiques of synthetic intelligence instruments within the CNET AI Atlas hub.
Augie creates a script through ChatGPT, generates an AI voice for narration and voiceover, and creates, defines and animates photos. It then places all of it collectively to create a completed product in minutes.
It is designed for individuals who have to create video content material, do not have expertise with modifying software program, and do not have time to delve right into a deep understanding of storytelling.
“We inform tales, however what we do not naturally do is shoot video,” Tuman stated. “We are able to report ourselves very simply. We are able to reduce a report very simply, however the second you get a bit bit extra difficult than that, it is form of a psychological nightmare of find out how to put all these items collectively.”
I used Augie to create a promotional video for a fictitious product known as TechNeck. My clue was: “a cream designed to alleviate neck and shoulder ache from the awkward posture many laptop customers undertake throughout lengthy classes in entrance of a display screen.”
Augie helped me create this video in about half-hour, with photos courtesy of Getty and a voiceover by ElevenLabs, an AI text-to-speech software program that Augie collaborated with.
Ease, expediency and customization are prime priorities for Toeman and the Augie crew. He hopes Augie will help usher in an period of inexpensive video-on-demand for each people and company organizations.
Augie, at the moment in beta, affords a free model and month-to-month and annual subscriptions starting from $10 to $34 per thirty days, with a customized possibility for bigger firms which will have particular wants. You too can purchase tokens, which function credit to create an animated AI to your video.
That is one among a collection of quick profiles of AI startups that can assist you perceive what’s taking place within the subject of synthetic intelligence. To study extra about synthetic intelligence, see our new AI Atlas hub, that includes product critiques, information, ideas and explanations.
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