AI generated Elon

Happy Hump Day! Is it just me or are the weeks blending together the closer we get to the new year? 

Anyway, here’s the news: 

🩻 Google updated its document scanning tool and brought it to iOS.

🐕 A startup is trying to use science to make your dog live longer.

✈️ Virgin Atlantic flew the first transatlantic flight using sustainable fuel.

Generative AI and video seem to be a match made in heaven lately. Companies like Runway initially set the bar with Gen2. Now, new platforms are trying to raise that bar. 

Pika is one of them. It's founded by Demi Guo and Chenlin Meng, two former Stanford PhD students, and Pika just raised a whopping $55 million led by Lightspeed Ventures. 

Pika crafted its own foundational video model that lets users generate entire clips through text prompts. For example, an animated Elon Musk in an astronaut suit, which the team demonstrated in its launch video. 

Where it differs from other offerings is its feature set, such as allowing users to transform the style of existing videos from, say, live action to animation. Other features get more granular, such as the AI module that allows you to change certain aspects, like the clothing a character might be wearing. 

Pika is marketed as an idea-to-video platform. Its goal is to lower the barrier to entry dramatically. One upvoter, Product Hunt founder, Ryan Hoover, is happy about that, writing:

“I've always wanted to produce a documentary. The barrier to entry is lowering. :)”

Any bets on what the documentary will be about?

• This tool builds a squad of AI assistants to help you out.
• SafeTube creates a safe version of YouTube and Vimeo for kids.
• This AI generates recipes from your leftover ingredients.

• Swiddle lets you create a landing page in minutes instead of hours.
• Here’s a suite of AI tools to make a developer’s life easier.
• These GPTs help you save time by automating marketing work.