Soumil
Singh, founder of Unfaze.ai –
Photo/Supplied
A Kiwi Harvard
graduate has developed world-first AI that creates images
and videos for social media platforms from a user’s basic
text description.
The technology, known as Unfaze.ai,
is set to be the first of its kind to fully automate the
creation of short-form video content using AI – for both
individual content creators and brands.
While designed
for individual creators and influencers to build their
social media following, the AI video-generation tech is also
set to reduce barriers faced by thousands of SMEs in
accessing social media platforms such as TikTok and YouTube
to promote their products organically.
In contrast to
traditional content creation processes that require hours of
graphic design and post-production from teams of
professionals, the new AI will allow users to generate
images and short-form videos, including voiceovers, using
only basic text prompts to describe their content idea –
within minutes.
While the current technology version
can produce entertaining content for individual creators, a
new suite of features set to launch in the coming weeks will
make it the first platform to allow a company to create
images of their products with multiple backgrounds using
generative AI models and then convert these images into the
creation of short-form video content.
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The company has
received multi-million dollar support from US and NZ
investment funds – including Y Combinator, the world’s top
accelerator and the first investor in Airbnb and
Dropbox.
Following a surge in the development of text
and image generators, AI-generated video is now seen as the
next frontier – attracting billions of dollars in funding
from investors. While video creation tools from OpenAI and
Google are not yet available, start-ups like Unfaze are
moving rapidly to secure market share before global tech
giants release their own business and individual-focused
offerings.
Industry experts say the market potential
for the technology is significant, particularly within the
fastest-growing social media platforms such as TikTok which
has 1.1 billion monthly active users globally and is
available in over 160 countries. The app’s audience is
expected to grow by over 64% to surpass 1.8 billion users by
the end of 2024.
While once seen as a platform for
only dance trends and viral videos, research shows around
54% of businesses use TikTok to promote their brand, with an
average of nine posts per month – however 25% say constantly
creating content, appealing to a larger consumer base, and
creating high-quality videos is a barrier and, many
businesses report struggling to boost engagement
rates.[1][2]
Soumil Singh, founder of Unfaze.ai, who
left New Zealand seven years ago to study applied
mathematics and computer science at Harvard University in
Boston before launching a Silicon Valley start-up, says
while the engagement rate on TikTok is 93% higher than other
social media networks, the need to create volumes of fresh
content is resource intensive and cost prohibitive –
creating an access barrier for many Kiwi content creators,
influencers and SMEs.[3]
He says while the production
of a single video could take an agency weeks to complete and
cost thousands of dollars, recent advances in machine
learning have now made it possible for content creators to
simply ‘instruct’ the artificial intelligence to produce
video content to meet their specifications.
“What we
know about these social media and video platforms is that
they rely heavily on high volumes of fresh content for users
to maintain visibility and engagement.
“With
traditional tools, you have to think of an idea, write a
script, collate all the images and video snippets and then
decide how to bring them together. Alternatively, now you
could just upload your product image, tell AI your idea
press a button and have it generate one or multiple versions
of the video and even automatically schedule and post them
to your social media accounts.
“With apps like
TikTok, the model content allows businesses to post content
that can organically expand its reach – which means that
there is no additional cost each time someone views or
clicks on the video.
“Under this model, the cost of
a campaign is centered in the production of each piece of
content. To produce an effective result requires multiple
different versions to be tested and even then the video
can’t be reused indefinitely.
“This is one of
the reasons many companies may not even have a short-form
video content strategy and rely on paid media ad
platforms.
“However when we use AI to remove this
constraint, it allows even very small Kiwi businesses with
low budgets to drive organic traffic efficiently and
potentially expose themselves to a global audience of
millions of viewers.
“We believe this technology has
the potential to be transformative for thousands of SMEs
around the world – providing them almost unlimited access to
video content which they can use to market their
products,” he says.
Singh says they have now raised
$5.5 million and are using the funds to further the
development of the technology and support the video creation
software launch in July 2024 on their existing online
platform.
He says this research will bring them closer
to the production of AI-generated videos that are
indistinguishable from manually created
content.
“This is really the Holy Grail of video
creation and with the speed at which AI is evolving, we
expect to reach this point within a matter of months, not
years,” he
says.
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