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DALL-E amazes—and scares—creative community
Depending on where you sit, AI’s growing influence on just about every industry imaginable is either scary or exhilarating—and for many it’s both.
This month, artists and creatives are the ones collectively freaking out while taking in the wonder of decentralized art, or the “art of big data.”
Millions of people are using new text-to-image algorithms like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stablefusion to generate futuristic looking images from a few simple text prompts. The AI uses sprawling databases of existing imagery to convert a written prompt into a new picture.
That raises concerns from everyone from artists worried they’ll lose their jobs to lawyers concerned about copyright infringement. (One artist suggested these platforms ban the work of living artists from their catalogs.)
Others are jumping in to see what AI can do for them.
Hollywood actor Bruce Willis is reportedly looking to AI to revamp his Big Screen career following a debilitating medical condition. James Earl Jones continues to narrate the voice of Darth Vader post-retirement thanks to an AI company.
Text-to-photo
This month DALL-E opened the floodgates by removing its waiting list. Already over 1.5M users are creating more than 2M images per day.
Closest rival Stable Diffusion is the creation of London- and Los Altos, Calif.-based Stability AI, whose founder was the chief architect of Collective & Augmented Intelligence Against COVID-19. Unlike DALL-E, Stable Diffusion allows users to have fun with images of celebrities, consequences be damned.
MIT is even getting into the game with its Combustable Diffusion.
As the names imply, this AI relies on diffusion models alongside compositional operators to combine text descriptions without the need for more training. Many share Getty Image’s concerns about copyright infringement. The photo sharing platform doesn’t allow people to buy or share AI-generated art.
NFT art marketplaces
The budding field of “generative art” or “algorithmic art” is catching on with art lovers partly because of the complexity of the work. It’s opening new marketplaces for artists and want-to-be-artists like LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman who sell their creations on Web3 platforms. Hoffman quipped that “a single word is worth a thousand pictures.”
A piece of AI art generated in Midjourney recently won the top prize for digital art at the Colorado State Fair.
Others are selling less controversial versions of crypto art that they either create themselves or using material they have full rights to use.
The next wave?
All of this has people wondering what’s next.
According to MIT, it’s text-to-video, a feature that Meta already unveiled with its Make-A-Video offering.
Company feature: why we're excited about AssemblyAI
AI-as-a-service pioneer Assembly AI is hiring like mad to help developers everywhere easily access advanced text transcription and analysis tools. Assembly AI is one of the leaders in the voice recognition market that’s seeing massive growth and is expected to reach $27B in the next few years. The Y Combinator alumnus is backed by an impressive list of investors, including Stripe’s co-founders, and looking to fill more than two dozen positions.
AssemblyAI was founded in 2017 when CEO and founder Dylan Fox was struck by the antiquated offerings in the speech recognition space. It led Dylan to ask, “What if you could build a Twilio-style API company using the latest AI research that was just much easier for developers to access state-of-the-art AI models for speech recognition, with a much better developer experience?”
And that’s exactly what they did.
Trending in tech
Copy, paste, print
Across manufacturing sectors, 3D printing (additive manufacturing) is reshaping production capabilities.
The global 3D printing market was valued at $15B last year and is expected to grow to $83.9B by 2029. Increasing digitization and adoption of advanced technologies like smart factories and machine learning are spurring on this growth.
Manufacturing companies are turning to 3D printing for prototyping, design, modeling, and faster time to market. The result is a reduction in production expenses, enabling manufacturers to offer more competitive pricing. Due to these benefits, demand for 3D printers will continue to rise in the coming years.
Packaging the (hearts) Mother Earth
Packaging has always been a way of establishing brand identity, but increasingly, companies are putting their values on display with environmentally friendly packaging options.
Packaging offers a bright future for job seekers looking to work at the intersection of design and environmentalism. Global Market Insights Inc. anticipates the packaging equipment industry will grow to a $50B market by 2027.
Companies are pioneering reusable and degradable packaging materials with products made from agricultural byproducts and surplus food. In some cases, the packaging is even improving the taste of ingredients. The pharmaceutical industry in the U.S. and the expanding eCommerce sector in Asia are also set to help packaging grow.
Women leading unicorns
Women-led startups have consistently shown that they have a higher likelihood of success when they do get funded.
In 2021, women-founded startups in the U.S. raised $55B, representing a 146% YoY increase from 2020. While many hurdles remain, there are breakthroughs to be celebrated. For example, 2021 saw 4X more women-led startups reach unicorn status than 2020. This class of 83 newly minted women-led unicorns spans everything from agtech and healthcare to e-commerce and delivery.
Now, more organizations, certification and funding programs, and women-focused business awards are emerging to expand opportunities for more women to join the ranks of success.
See our list: Women-Owned Companies Hiring Top Talent
In the news
- Miami-based DoorLoop, a rental property management software company, raised a $20M Series A led by Alpine Software Group. The software automates everything from listing units and rent collection to maintenance requests and tenant move-outs.
- TrovaTrip, a Portland, Ore.-based travel and booking platform, raised a $15M Series A led by Madrona. The platform allows creators to sell and host multi-day experiences with their communities.
- Los Angeles-based SpinLaunch, a space technology company producing an alternate method for putting satellites into orbit, raised a $71M Series B led by ATW Partners. As the name suggests, SpinLaunch aims to use a rotating arm to catapult objects to space.
- New York City-based PredictionStrike, a marketplace where users can trade shares of athletes, raised a $3M seed round led by MaC Venture Capital. The marketplace operates like a stock market, allowing users to buy/sell shares, build portfolios, and trade live as players’ real-world performance determines share prices.
Hot startups hiring now