With only a few words, AI models can be invited to create a story, an image or even a short film. But according to Weber Wong, these models are all “manufactured by non-creative so that other non-creative feel creative”.
In other words, they are not designed for real creative professionals. This is something that Wong hopes to change with FloraA new startup where he is founder and CEO.
Flora launched this week, with a manifest Declaring that “the creative tools of AI should be more than toys for the generation of Slal ai” and describing Wong and his team as “obsessed with the construction of a power tool that will deeply shape the future of creative work”.
The manifest positions the flora as something different from existing AI tools, which “facilitate creation, but lack creative control” and existing creative software, which gives users “control, but are not intuitive and long”.
Flora is not trying to build better generative AI models. Wong argued that one of the key ideas of the startup is that “models are not creative tools”. Thus, Flora offers an “infinite canvas” which fits into existing models – it is a visual interface where users can generate blocks of text, images and video.
“The model does not matter, the technology does not matter,” told me Wong “this is the interface.”
For example, a user could start by encouraging Flora to create an image of a flower, then to ask for details on the image, with these details leading to more invites and various images, each step and variation being mapped on the aforementioned canvas, which can also be shared for collaborative work with customers.
Wong told me that he wanted Flora to be useful for all artists and creative, but the company initially focuses on work with visual design agencies. In fact, he made it the product with the comments of the designers of the famous agency Pentacle.
The objective, Wong said, is to allow a Pentagram designer to “do 100 times more creative work”, for example by creating a logo design, then quickly generating 100 variations. He compared it to the evolution of the musical composition – where Mozart “needed an entire orchestra to play his music”, a musician today can do everything “his garage in New Jersey with Ableton, doing so himself and publishing it on SoundCloud”.
Wong himself has training in art and technology, having worked as an investor at Menlo Ventures, but when he did it: “I was not the person I returned.” Determined to become the type of founder to invest, he finally joined the Interactive Telecommunications Program of New York University, a higher education program focused on the use of technology to create art.
When Flora launched an alpha version in August, Wong decided to “launch with An artistic project This presented our AI technology in real time “, with the Flora home page showing a live flow from a GoPro camera on Wong’s head, and website visitors have the opportunity to use the AI to stylize the images after having registered for the Flora waiting list.
Given its history, Wong knows that there are artists and professionals who are skeptical or even opposed with vehemence to the use of AI in art – in fact, Pentagram generated a certain controversy Last year, he used Midjourney to create the style of illustration for a project with the American government.
Wong said that when the existing models were adopted by “AI natives”, he hopes that Flora will be able to win “AI Curious”, and finally become useful enough for even the “hateful” to have the impression of trying it.
When I have raised concerns according to which the models of AI can be trained without taking into account copyright and intellectual property, Wong noted that Flora formed any model of AI itself (because it uses the models of other societies), adding: “We will follow societal standards.”
And although he is passionate not to want Flora to be used to release a slum of slal (“we are going to get hats that say” anti-a-slobe “”), he suggested that instead, the startup will allow artists to unlock “new aesthetic and creative possibilities”, in the same way Kodak Brownie camera Photograph transformed by making it more relaxed and accessible.
Flora does not disclose funding details, but its donors include A16Z games. The product is available free of charge with a limited number of projects and content generated, then professional prices start at $ 16 per month.
