Regardless of dealing with controversy — as many AI mannequin suppliers have recently — over its knowledge scraping and coaching practices, the New York Metropolis-based startup Runway is plowing forward with new marquee options for its reasonable generative AI video platform.
Right now, the corporate introduced on its X account and its Discord server that Gen-3 Alpha, the brand new AI video mannequin it unveiled again in mid June 2024 able to producing extremely reasonable video in seconds from easy textual content prompts, now accepts nonetheless photos as prompts as nicely.
The consumer merely has to navigate to Runway’s web site, click on on the “strive Gen 3-Alpha” language and they are going to be taken to a display screen the place they will add imagery and/or proceed to enter textual content prompts to information new AI video generations which are 5 or 10 seconds in size (the consumer chooses). A ten-second generated video requires 40 credit by means of Runway’s pay-to-play and subscription tiers, whereas a 5-second technology prices 20 credit.
Exams reveal Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha image-to-video replace is surprisingly quick whereas retaining prime quality
We examined the characteristic briefly on my private Runway account and I used to be personally blown away by each the pace (it took lower than a minute to generate the video from a nonetheless picture I offered) and the standard. See my nonetheless (generated with separate AI service Midjourney) and video made with Runway Gen-3 Alpha embedded under.
Security measures in place
The mannequin robotically makes an attempt to detect and block the creation of video from express nonetheless imagery or well-known figures resembling politicians.
The characteristic additionally made its approach on-line early briefly for some Runway subscribers over the weekend earlier than being yanked down after which put again up at the moment.
Preliminary examples abound
On its X account, Runway additionally highlighted 10 attention-grabbing movies generated from nonetheless photos with the Gen-3 Alpha mannequin.
As Runway posted in its tweet: “Picture to Video is main replace that vastly improves the creative management and consistency of your generations.”
Runway’s co-founder and CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela launched the brand new characteristic on his personal private account on X with the straightforward phrase “it’s time” adopted by a publish of his personal image-to-video creation.
The video AI race is neck and neck — pending litigation
Runway is certainly one of a number of corporations — together with OpenAI with its Sora mannequin, Kuaishou Expertise with its Kling AI mannequin, Luma AI with its Dream Machine, and Pika with its self-titled mannequin — vying to supply quick and prime quality generative video to customers.
Nevertheless, OpenAI’s Sora nonetheless stays personal for now, whereas the opposite fashions are accessible to members of the general public to make use of.
However with Runway’s new nonetheless image-to-video replace promising one more approach for customers to make Hollywood-quality movies on the fly, it’s clear that the whole discipline of filmmaking and video creation is being upended like by no means earlier than.
However will the courts stifle the innovation on the behest of aggrieved artists and rights’ holders of copyrighted materials?
Runway is, in any case, amongst a number of AI corporations presently being sued in school motion lawsuits by creators who allege that the overall apply of AI corporations scraping and coaching on publicly posted materials — together with copyrighted materials — with out categorical permission, authorization, compensation, or consent is a violation of copyright legislation. How the courts rule on this situation will little doubt vastly affect the current and way forward for AI video and inventive instruments.
