THE NEWS

🐰 The future of AI video is here

Pika Labs, launched in April by Stanford computer science grads, is really shaking things up. Their journey started with a shot at Runway's $10,000 AI video contest. Frustrated with the tools they had to work with, they said, 'Let's do this better.' Fast forward, and now they're a serious competitor to Runway.

Their latest release, Pika 1.0, dropped on Christmas Day. Big change: It's moved from a Discord server to its own sleek website, pika.art. It's user-friendly and packed with cool new video-making tools.

What's new? First off, there's an Upscale option. When you like a video, you can ask for a higher resolution version. But the real game-changers are the 'Add 4s' and 'Edit' features.

Add 4s: Add 4s is a big leap. Given how costly video generation is, these AI tools usually spit out tiny 2-to 3-second clips. So does Pika, however you can extend it by an extra 4 seconds, up to 3 times. That means videos up to 15 seconds long. Until now the only option to extend a clip was to slow it down using a different AI tool, and add camera motion with yet another one.

Edit: The 'Edit' feature? Super handy. You can tweak just parts of a video and keep the rest as is. Although I’ve got less than ideal outputs with this one, the idea is great and I hope it will only get better with time.

You can also change the aspect ratio and Pika expands and fills out the canvas. By repeating this process you can effectively zoom out and create a much wider shot.

There are also camera movements: zoom, rotation, tilt and pan are all available for the creators. There’s also a speed setting for these however in my experience it works in mysterious and unpredictable ways.

The real question: Did the videos get any better?

Let’s compare to what I’ve created previously with Pika:

Image to Video #1: I used a Midjourney photo – a challenging silhouette with fog, a horse, and a man. The new version's movements feel more natural, and it seems higher res (ignore the gif static). However it’s still far from movie like quality:

Image to Video #2: Another Midjourney pic. The new Pika nails dynamic camera moves – zooms and rotates like a real camera, not just digital zoom.

Text to video: Two months ago when I tried Pika the first time I gave the following text prompt: horse galloping through the main street of a western town, wide shot and it gave me this:

The same prompt in the new version resulted in this.

While it hurts my eyes to see those horse legs getting broken by the AI, the new version is way better. It gets what a western town should look like, the horse doesn't slide, and it's more focused on the subject. It’s so close to being usable in a video.

All in all, it's a massive improvement. We saw eerily similar leaps in image generation last January – going from 'interesting' to 'almost usable'. And we know where they ended up by the end of 2023. (Just take a look at the AI Art of the Day at the end of the newsletter.)

If you spend enough time experimenting, you'll likely start producing some pretty impressive videos with it. But keep an eye out – the real revolution in video generation is set to happen this year.

Pika is completely free to use. Feel free to try it out at pika.art.

ONE MORE THING

Get GPT-4 on Your Android for Free!

Microsoft shook things up by rebranding Bing Chat to 'Copilot' last year. Now, there's even a dedicated domain at copilot.microsoft.com, and guess what? They've rolled out an Android app too.

Copilot is powered by the GPT-4 engine, and here's the best part – it's totally free. Yep, you get the same tech that OpenAI charges $20 a month for, but you don't have to spend a penny.

⌚ If You Have One More Minute

• 📰 The New York Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work

• 💼 AI-created “virtual influencers” are stealing business from humans

• 🎬 Midjourney starts training video models in January

• 💬 GitHub Copilot Chat now available for all organizations and individuals

AI Art of the Day 🎨

AI-Generated Pope Francis Pics Are All the Rage on Instagram Again! This round, it's not just about him rocking Balenciaga – he's out there partying with the folks.

The comments section is buzzing with people trying to figure out if these snaps are legit.

Looks like we're in for a pretty weird year!

🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄

That's all for today, folks!

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