AI video is in the news this week. And of course, it’s all Ashton Kutcher’s fault. OK, so I haven’t forgiven him for his abysmal portrayal of Steve Jobs.
But Mr. Dude Where’s My Car? is getting attention this week for saying the quiet part out loud about AI video. According to SiliconValley.com and other media outlets, Kutcher has been saying laudatory things about how AI can democratize the filmmaking process. It will make the process more affordable. Human writers, actors, key grips, etc, all cost money.
Kutcher’s comments on this subject came during an on-stage chat he held with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. In that discussion, Kutcher wondered aloud why anyone would waste money burning film anymore. He offered just a small example to illustrate his point.
“Why would you go out and shoot an establishing shot of a house in a television show when you could just create the establishing shot for $100?” Kutcher said.
I’m Out
It’s worth noting that Kutcher is a tech investor in addition to being Charlie Sheen’s replacement on Two and a Half Men. And he has the Shark Tank appearances to prove it.
His comments attracted a social media backlash from Hollywood types. The kind with blood in their veins. This post on X is fairly typical of the love Ashton is getting from his Tinseltown peers.
But the real AI video story this week wasn’t Ashton Kutcher attracting Hollywood hate for saying (with glee) that AI is taking over.
This week’s real AI story is AI video startup Pika Labs raising $80 million from venture firms including Spark Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greycroft, and Jared Leto. I mean, of course.
Pika, founded just last year by Demi Guo and Chenlin Meng, is now valued at $470 million.
Ideas to Video
So what does Pika do? The company describes itself as the “idea-to-video platform that sets your creativity in motion.”
A story in the Washington Post this week frames Pika’s raise as part of a brewing battle over AI video between AI’s big dogs (Open AI, Google) and scrappy startups like Pika, Runway, Synthesia, and others.
As the Post story says:
“Video tools from OpenAI and Google aren’t publicly available yet, so start-ups such as Pika are moving fast to expand before the bigger companies put out their own commercial and consumer-focused tools. But creating a video with AI is much more technically difficult than making a still image, and requires a huge amount of computer processing power, making it an expensive and slow process.”
The post reports, citing PitchBook data, that in Q1 2024, AI and machine learning startups (not just video) raised $25.9 billion. This is up by nearly 20% over Q1 last year.
The size of Pika’s raise is significant. There seems to be a general awareness that a big opportunity like AI requires big investments. This explains why many think Elon Musk will need more than the $6 billion he is raising for xAI.
One thing that sets Pika apart, according to the Post, is that the company, founded by two former AI PhD candidates, has built its own foundation model. In other words, the company does not appear to have used the AI resources of the big tech companies it is poised to compete against.
At Localogy’s recent L24 conference in Texas, we chatted with AI entrepreneur David Shim on stage for a fireside chat. Shim had a lot to say about raising capital for AI startups. While David was skeptical of Sam Altman’s one-person unicorn prediction, he did agree that AI will allow many startups to get further before they need capital. And this is changing early stage investing. The All In Podcast bros (Chamath et al) have been preaching a stronger version of this sermon for a while as well.
Shim did say that VCs have become skeptical of the growing number of companies seeking funding under the guise of AI.
“There is a trend right now across VCs,” Shim said. “When you are AI, they look at it with a high level of skepticism.”
So the money is there. As is the scrutiny.
