With only a few phrases, AI fashions will be prompted to create a narrative, a picture, or perhaps a quick movie. However in accordance with Weber Wong, these fashions are all “made by non-creatives for different non-creatives to really feel inventive.”

In different phrases, they’re not constructed for precise inventive professionals. That’s one thing Wong is hoping to alter with Flora, a brand new startup the place he’s founder and CEO.

Flora launched this week, full with a manifesto declaring that “AI inventive instruments must be greater than toys for producing AI slop” and describing Wong and his group as “obsessive about constructing an influence device that may profoundly form the way forward for inventive work.”

The manifesto positions Flora as one thing totally different from present AI instruments, which “make it simple to create, however lack inventive management,” and from present inventive software program, which supplies customers “management, however are unintuitive & time-consuming.”

Flora isn’t attempting to construct higher generative AI fashions. Wong argued that one of many startup’s key insights is that “fashions are usually not inventive instruments.” So as an alternative, Flora provides an “infinite canvas” that integrates with present fashions — it’s a visible interface the place customers can generate blocks of textual content, photographs, and video.

“The mannequin doesn’t matter, the expertise doesn’t matter,” Wong instructed me “It’s concerning the interface.”

For instance, a consumer might begin by prompting Flora to create a picture of a flower, then ask for particulars concerning the picture, with these particulars resulting in extra prompts and assorted photographs, with every step and variation mapped out on the aforementioned canvas, which will also be shared for collaborative work with purchasers.

Wong instructed me he needs Flora to be helpful to any and all artists and creatives, however the firm is initially centered on working with visible design companies. In actual fact, it’s iterating on the product with suggestions from designers at famed company Pentagram.

The aim, Wong stated, is to permit a designer at Pentagram to “simply do 100X extra inventive work,” say by making a emblem design after which rapidly producing 100 variations. He in contrast it to the evolution of musical composition — the place Mozart “wanted a complete orchestra to play his music,” a musician can get all of it performed “from his storage in New Jersey with Ableton, making it himself and posting it on SoundCloud.”

Wong has a background in each artwork and expertise himself, having labored as an investor at Menlo Ventures however leaving when he realized, “I used to be not the individual I’d again.” Decided to develop into the type of founder price investing in, he finally joined New York College’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, a graduate program centered on utilizing expertise to create artwork.

When Flora launched an alpha model in August, Wong determined to “launch with an art project that showcased our real-time AI expertise,” with the Flora homepage displaying a reside feed from a GoPro digital camera on Wong’s head, and web site guests getting the chance to make use of AI to stylize the footage after signing up for the Flora waitlist.

Given his background, Wong is aware of there are artists and professionals who’re skeptical and even vehemently against the usage of AI in artwork — actually, Pentagram generated some controversy final yr when it used Midjourney to create the illustration type for a mission with the US authorities.

Wong stated that the place present fashions have been embraced by “AI natives,” he’s hoping Flora can win over the “AI curious,” and finally even develop into helpful sufficient that even “AI haters” really feel they’ve to offer it a attempt.

After I raised issues that AI fashions will be trained without regard for copyright and mental property, Wong famous that Flora isn’t coaching any AI fashions itself (as a result of it’s utilizing different corporations’ fashions), including, “We’ll observe societal requirements.”

And whereas he’s captivated with not wanting Flora for use to unleash a flood of AI slop (“We’re going to get hats that say ‘anti-AI slop’”), he prompt that as an alternative, the startup will permit artists to unlock “new aesthetic and inventive potentialities,” in the identical manner Kodak’s Brownie camera reworked pictures by making it extra informal and accessible.

Flora isn’t disclosing funding particulars, however its backers embrace A16Z Video games. The product is obtainable without cost with a restricted variety of initiatives and generated content material, after which skilled pricing begins at $16 monthly.