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Lensa AI. Generative AI selfies. After the Lensa AI photo editing app added “magic avatar” features, the app, which has been around since 2018, has gone viral in the last few weeks. Lensa AI works by inviting users to upload 10-20 photos of themselves. Using the open source Stable Diffusion model, the app processes your photos to generate avatars of you that look like they were created by a digital artist. In other words: the avatars are not selfies to which filters or effects were applied; they are made from scratch based on the app learning from the user-supplied example selfies. But oops, the app can also be tricked into creating NSFW images, something the company reportedly is working on to fix.

Twelve Labs. Visual 1st Best Technology Award winner raises more $M. Finding the right video, and then finding the desired scene within that video, ain’t exactly easy. Twelve Labs goes a long way towards solving that problem. Hence, the startup won the Best Technology Award at our recent Visual 1st conference. And now they raised another $12M in addition to the $5M they raised earlier (Twelve Labs is currently still in closed beta). 

As TechCrunch explains: “Twelve Labs uses AI to attempt to extract “rich information” from videos such as movement and actions, objects and people, sound, text on screen, and speech to identify the relationships between them. The platform converts these various elements into mathematical representations called “vectors” and forms “temporal connections” between frames, enabling applications like video scene search.” 

So you just say something like “Give me a video showing someone reacting to putting a frisbee through a hoop” as Twelve Labs co-founder Soyoung Lee did during her Visual 1st Show & Tell presentation, and you find a clip that features a scene along these lines.

Circle Graphics & JONDO. More photo print production consolidation. Circle Graphics has acquired canvas print lab JONDO, Ltd. JONDO will become a unit of Circle’s Sensaria wall-decor division. JONDO represents Circle’s sixth acquisition since it was acquired by PE firm H.I.G. in September 2019. Other acquisitions include CanvasPop, Bay Photo, and Graphik Dimensions.

Of note: while Circle Graphics has only facilities in the US, with the acquisition of JONDO the company now also has standardized printing plants in Mexico, Australia, Spain, the UK and Canada.

Adobe Stock. Allowing sale of generative AI-created visuals. Adobe is not letting the generative AI revolution fly by them while hibernating on the sidelines (if you’re not daunted by lengthy articles check out Adobe at 40: The past, present, and future of creativity software’s enduring giant). 

Not only is Photoshop adding generative AI creation features, Adobe is also proactively tackling tricky generative AI image right issues through its Content Authenticity Initiative, as was recently discussed at Visual 1st. And now a daring move: Creators are allowed to sell their AI-generated content on Adobe Stock. 

Aura. Digital photo frames: Been there, done that? Not really. Digital photo frame maker Aura raises $26M in a mix of debt and equity led by Lago Innovation Fund. The company’s app, which now nears 3M users after selling 1M photo frames, helps family members to connect and share their photos across devices. Aura's app user base has been growing 100% YoY for the last three years. Who said digital photo frames are relics from the past?

Flickr. Joining the fediverse? [If “fediverse” is not part of your daily vocabulary: it refers to an interconnected group of independent servers across the globe running free, opensource software that allows their users to communicate and connect with one another].

Flickr is reportedly considering support for ActivityPub, the social protocol powering Twitter alternative Mastodon. If Flickr were to add support for ActivityPub, it would no longer function only as a photosharing site, but would become a part of a larger web of social networks where users could find, follow and engage with one another across platforms without having to create separate accounts for each service. 

BeReal. Accolades from the app stores. It’s not only investors recognizing the value of BeReal – close to $600M that is. Authentic photosharing with friends also wins accolades from the app stores: Apple names it App of the Year; on Google Play it receives the Users’ Choice (while WOMBO’s generative AI Dream app is named (Google Play) App of the Year).

Runway ML. Valued at $500M. Runway ML, which helped to create the algorithm behind the popular text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion raises $50M, which values the company at $500M.

Minor detail: it’s 500x its annual revenues of $1M! Reportedly, the company envisions building an Adobe-style suite of AI-native video editing software tools.