Recently, Runway, a generative AI platform, raised about $100 million in Series D financing led by Google. Runway is not only a rising star in the investment world, but its product RunwayML participated in the production of “The Universe”, which also won the Oscar for Best Actress not long ago.
“This is a magical world, and what is left to human beings is an ever-changing moment.” As the lines in the movie explain, Runway’s video editing tool Gen-2 demonstrates the magic and wonder of AI transforming text into a video world. We need to input just a few words or a description of a sentence to generate the desired video image for us.
Video is an important part of contemporary social content media, and video apps such as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube have also been among the most downloaded apps in the past few years. Short videos are more in line with the entertainment needs of modern people using fragmented time in a fast-paced and high-information-density environment. Vertical segmentation is also the development trend of short videos, and Runway just meets both.
Below we will explore the development history of Runway, introduce its core products and unique technologies, and analyze AIGC and its impact on the entertainment industry at home and abroad.
Rise of Runway
Runway is one of the most noteworthy companies on the 2023 AI 50 list released by Forbes, but its rise did not happen overnight, but has experienced coincidence and necessity.
school stage
Runway was founded in 2018 by Cristóbal Valenzuela (CEO), Anastailities Germanidis (CTO) and Alejandro Matamala Ortiz (CDO).
(Runway founders: Anastailities Germanidis (above), Alejandro Matamala Ortiz (left) and Cristóbal Valenzuela (right) in Manhattan)
Before starting his company, Valenzuela spent a lot of time understanding how computers were applied to the visual arts. Although he only has a background in economics, he is fascinated by the artistic creativity of computers and wonders what information technology can enable artists to do with images and videos.
So, after moving to New York, he enrolled in New York University’s ITP (Interactive Electronic Media) major. This is a well-known two-year master’s program that trains students to explore new technologies and interact with other disciplines to improve human life.
Valenzuela met the other two founders while researching ML models for image and video segmentation applications in creative fields at NYU.
After learning ImageNet and AlexNet, they realize that something big is about to happen in the world, but no one will do it, so why not choose to do it by themselves?
Emerging
At first they only focused on the academic path, but when doing thesis research, Valenzuela realized that the perfect academic assumption would only become a bubble for practice, so he began to communicate more with people in the art industry, and started the first in the school A series of experimental and integrated research projects were established in Photoshop and Premiere and inspired by the outside world.
Adobe’s artificial intelligence team also threw an olive branch at them, but what they wanted was to control the entire creative process, not to create according to a predetermined route. Valenzuela believes that Premiere and Final Cut are only tools for professionals in the old media era to create audio and video, not video tools for individuals in the short video era. So, they came up with the idea of starting a company.
Soon, in 2018, Runway was first launched as a model application store, enabling users to choose machine learning models for various use cases. The product feature is that the application visual interface abstracts the original reasoning and training process.
As the model catalog and user base continued to grow, the team began to see a particular usage pattern emerge in video editing. Many video editors and filmmakers use Runway because they see the potential of using models to automate tedious workflows.
So Runway started trying to use the knowledge in its catalog of models to build deeper around video editing. The entire team realized they were cutting the time and cost of producing video and making ML video editing accessible to everyone. That’s when they changed tack and decided to focus on building an instant video generation tool.
great success
Runway is defined as a new tool for the next generation of video creators. Valenzuela said that in artistic creativity, people will never be able to find a tool that can do everything, but Runway is a tool that provides help based on people’s questions and insights, aiming to reduce the tediousness and hassle of people making videos.
Runway took advantage of the market’s enthusiasm for generative artificial intelligence. After raising several rounds of venture capital, Runway’s valuation reached US$1.5 billion, making it a new generative AI unicorn. After reaching a large cloud agreement with Amazon in March this year, Runway signed a major cloud computing agreement with Google not long ago.
Today, Runway is a full-fledged video editor that enables real-time collaboration in the browser, with more and more AI video editing and creation features. It is used by thousands of users, from amateurs to professionals.
Runway’s product layout
At Runway, they believe everyone has a story. Its mission: to make content creation accessible to everyone. So the company is using the latest advances in computer graphics and machine learning to push the boundaries of creativity, lowering the barriers to content creation and enabling a new wave of storytelling.
Over the past four years, the company has raised funding from top-tier investors, with teams ranging from small enough to fit a table to a diverse and creative team that has been working on artificial intelligence for video editing for years. Software development.
There are many products and technologies of Runway. The product form of Runway at the beginning of its business was an application store for ML (machine learning) models, on which users can use hundreds of models, such as the StyleGAN model.
Subsequently, Runway released about 30 AI creation tools based on the new AI algorithm, including five categories of audio, picture, video, 3D and generation, covering almost all audio and video content generation and processing tools.
In addition, as the world‘s first AI-generated video software, RunwayML is an example of its march into traditional content platforms and mobile terminals. In addition to providing a complete set of multi-modal artificial intelligence tool library, the tool library also introduces three core functions of image repair, green screen image editing, and motion tracking, which can be described as directly full of black technology and bursting effects.
Today, Runway’s core products are video editors Gen-1 and Gen-2. The Gen-1 model can change the style of the original video by inputting text or images, such as converting real-life footage into a cartoon paper-cut world. The Gen-2 model can directly use text to generate video scenes, enabling users to use text prompts to generate “realistic video content” and “automatically cut videos”.
Runway’s products and technologies are self-evident. In addition to many well-known brands and institutions, such as Adobe, Facebook, Google, Netflix and The New York Times, its customers also include Douyin and YouTube users, as well as mainstream film and TV drama studios. All are using the company’s creations, which are widely used in film, television and advertising. For example: the special effects production in “Black Widow”; “The Late Show” hosted by Stephen Colbert; the crazy and cool visual effects of “The Universe” and so on.
Behind the expansion of its application field is the huge change that the industry is facing. As the “magic magic” in the video field, tools such as Runway have been welcomed by the film and television production industry, but not everyone welcomes AI.
Writer’s Boycott, Special Effects Favorite
With the popularity of AI tools all over the world, people’s lives have indeed become more convenient, but this has also led to the unemployment of text workers such as copywriters and screenwriters. The company uses AI to write scripts, which is not only robbing screenwriters of their jobs, but also belittles the “dignity and value of human labor.”
Director Guo Fan said, “If the third season of “The Wandering Earth” is filmed, at least half of the people on the scene will be reduced. Artificial intelligence is both a challenge and an opportunity for us. It may be an opportunity for us to overtake Hollywood in a corner. “
At present, in Hollywood, due to cost considerations, producers are already using AI extensively for creation. According to previous media reports, after learning the plot of a popular American drama, the AI machine can already write the script outline for the first episode of the new season.
This use of AI for creation has triggered a strong resistance from thousands of film and TV screenwriters in the Hollywood Screenwriters Guild (WGA), who protest against low wages and the phenomenon that AI is increasingly replacing humans in script writing. “Black Mirror” creator Charlie Bullock said in an interview that he once used ChatGPT to write an episode of “Black Mirror” script, and the result was “like garbage.”
Although both belong to the film and television industry, the attitude of special effects producers towards AI is completely opposite, and they are actively embracing AI technology.
With the blessing of AI technology, the special effects team of the Academy Award-winning “The Universe” completed the post-production with only five people. The famous scene “hot dog hand” has also won unanimous praise from both inside and outside the industry.
This successful case shows that the potential of AI technology in film and television creation is huge and cannot be ignored. In order to discuss how AI technology can change the future of the film and television industry, recently, the non-profit organization AI LA held the “AI on the Lot” conference in Los Angeles, and finally got “The era of artificial intelligence has arrived” and “All creative workers should learn to use It” these two conclusions.
The trend is unstoppable, the wheels of technological innovation are rolling by, and the invasion of AI has been quietly staged in Hollywood.
AI companies are invading Hollywood
Indeed, the era of artificial intelligence has arrived, and it is changing the rules of the game in the film and television industry. More and more AIGC companies are ready to bring new inspiration to film and television production.
Deep Voodoo
Founded by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the well-known animated series “South Park”, Deep Voodoo focuses on the development of Deepfake technology visual effects services and synthetic media technology projects.
Deepfake is a technology that uses machine learning methods such as deep learning to create or synthesize audiovisual content. This technology can replace the face or expression in an existing image or video with a target person, so as to achieve the purpose of forging identity or expression. .
The company’s face-changing technology has attracted wide attention since its launch, such as singer Kendrick Lamar’s “The Heart Part 5” MV and basketball superstar Kobe’s face-changing video.
Metaphysic
Also using Deepfake technology for video creation is Metaphysic, which used Deepfake to make Elvis Presley, who has been dead for many years, on the stage of “America’s Got Talent” in September last year.
In addition, the company will use AI technology to rejuvenate the faces of the protagonists Tom Hanks and Robin White in the new film co-produced by the original crew of the classic movie “Forrest Gump”.
MARCH
As the visual effects studio behind the Marvel series “WandaVision” and the Netflix series “The Sun Calls”, MARZ has developed the AI-based visual effects tool “Vanity AI”.
Vanity AI can automatically complete 2D visual effects such as aging, rejuvenation, beauty, wigs and prosthetics, greatly reducing production time and cost.
In addition, Matt Panousis, COO of MARZ, believes that the problem of out-of-sync dubbing and picture is one of the main reasons why the content cannot be disseminated better, so the company is developing a tool to solve the problem of out-of-sync audio and picture, which Tools will help media companies better look overseas for greater development.
Rep
Respeecher is a Ukrainian start-up company founded in 2018. It is good at using AI technology to “clone” the voices of actors in old video archives, and then use them in new movie or game productions. In the episode “Obi-Wan Kenobi” launched by Disney+ last year, Respeecher successfully “cloned” the iconic breathing sound of the black warrior.
Similarly, Respeecher also restored the voice of Luke Skywalker in “The Book of Boba Fett,” another Lucasfilm adaptation of “Star Wars.”
In addition, in the 2021 Emmy-winning documentary short “Event of Moon Disaster,” Respeecher also used machine learning technology to process the images and sounds of Nixon’s 1969 speech on the Apollo 11 mission.
In addition to the above-mentioned companies, there are some AIGC companies that are also changing the film and television and animation industries.For example, Deepdub, which uses generative AI technology to re-dub foreign language movies and dramas in local languages; Chinese company DGene, which focuses on intelligent computer vision technology, light field technology, and deep learning technology; Wonder Dynamics, the company co-founded by X-Men and Ready Player One star Tye Sheridan and animation special effects expert Nikola Todorovic
Stay hungry，stay foolish
Runway’s entrepreneurial success is in line with the current trend of generative AI and the background of the short video media era. It is hard to say that it is not part of the process.
“We have infinite possibilities in every parallel world.” Can Evelyn’s exclamation in the movie also be confirmed in the career of the founder of Runway? He refused to join Google, and now leads Runway to work closely with Google.
Valenzuela once said in an interview that whether it is entrepreneurship or work, only by maintaining a continuous learning mentality and a learning speed faster than ordinary people can new products be created. Looking back on his pursuit and persistence of AIGC, even if he chose Google at that time, we believe that he will never be lost in the crowd.
The explosion of AIGC is not an impact on the development of the Metaverse, but a boost. The Metaverse will eventually lead us to integrate the real world with the virtual world. This seemingly distant concept cannot be separated from the support of artificial intelligence technology.
Halfway through 2023, has the metaverse gone? No, it just came back to us with a different flag.
[Declaration]: This article was originally created by the operation team of the Heart of the Universe. Reprinting without permission is strictly prohibited. If you need to reprint, please contact us. The copyright and final interpretation right of the article belongs to the Heart of the Universe.
Original title: Valuation soared 3 times, Runway, the company behind “The Instant Universe”, leads a new era of AI film and television