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Alias Technologies, an AI firm began by former Machine Zone CEO Kristen Garcia Dumont, has launched BeFake, a social media app for digital self-expression. It’s constructed on the catch phrase, “Why be actual once you could be pretend?”
The app, now out there on each the App Store and Google Play, provides a refreshing different to the standard actuality portrayed on current social media platforms, stated Kristen Garcia Dumont, CEO of Alias Applied sciences, in an interview with GamesBeat.
BeFake, powered by Alias Applied sciences’ AI tech, gives customers with an attractive platform to amplify their presence on social media by unleashing their creativeness. By inputting textual content prompts, customers can rework themselves into fascinating, augmented visuals, enabling them to vividly specific their authenticity and discover the infinite potentialities of their creativity past the restrictions of the bodily world.
“BeFake represents a revolution in how we work together with social media and the rising presence of AI in our social circles,” stated Garcia Dumont. “It’s extra than simply an app; it’s an expressive outlet that empowers new methods of connecting with mates by way of AI-generated visuals. We imagine authenticity can shine by way of fantasy as a lot as actuality.”
In distinction to the everyday posts seen on conventional social media platforms, BeFake’s AI-generated content material is contemporary, partaking, and thought-provoking, she stated. The platform encourages a type of communication that stimulates customers’ creativeness, offering them with a brand new method to discover their id past bodily boundaries. Moreover, it serves as a welcoming introduction to AI prompting.
Dumont added, “I’m actually enthusiastic about breaking down the boundaries of human connection, and imagine we will use AI to democratize social media and cut back the stress, stress, and vulnerability many people really feel in posting. Whereas we imagine the motion to point out uncooked, real-life candids on-line was well-intentioned [like with BeReal], our thesis is kind of totally different. Individuals need aspirational social media and to point out their greatest selves on-line, and BeFake lets customers simply make any second AI-augmented and share their creativity with mates.”
With its user-friendly interface, the BeFake app ensures a seamless and fulfilling journey from creativeness to visualization. Customers are invited to affix the BeFake neighborhood, the place they will authentically specific themselves by way of the act of “being pretend.” By letting their creativeness run wild, customers turn out to be an integral a part of the BeFake neighborhood.
BeFake truly tries its hardest to make any second as magical as attainable, so that you not have boring posts.
Origins
Garcia Dumont beforehand served because the CEO of cellular gaming big Machine Zone, maker of Sport of Battle and Cellular Strike.
Garcia Dumont helped lead the event and launch of two of probably the most worthwhile cellular social video games globally, grossing in extra of $1 billion. Her cofounder Tracy Lane is the previous COO of MZ, the place she led neighborhood, moderation, compliance and platform partnerships.
AppLovin purchased the corporate for $600 million in 2020. After engineering that acquisition, Garcia Dumont began Alias Applied sciences about two years in the past. She spent that point assembling a group of a dozen folks, together with a wide range of AI consultants, and so they developed the corporate’s AI fashions. The tech takes benefit of each laptop imaginative and prescient and generative AI.
“I dove proper in as a result of I knew I needed to do AI, and I knew we needed to simply begin on our AI fashions as shortly as attainable,” she stated. “It’s humorous how generative AI is the factor now. Two years in the past, nobody was speaking about it. You appeared just a little loopy, just a little fringe.”
Fairly than begin one other sport firm, Garcia Dumont determined that she foresaw that AI would create not solely a technological shift, however a “humanity shift.”
Her guess was that “folks had been going to be interacting increasingly and extra ‘bots.’ However in a very regular, enjoyable and informal means. And if we might be one of many first ones introducing AI in our social context, it might be one thing actually particular as a result of we noticed the spark of that in gaming. And thought I used to be nuts two years in the past.”
The corporate acquired began with laptop imaginative and prescient because the tech was extra superior, and it was essential to generate photorealistic pretend folks. All of the AI tech was slower then, however it has made large strides up to now yr. The thought was to make use of the AI to create pretend variations of individuals that may shock and delight them, Garcia Dumont stated.
She was considering of the day when folks would have AI boyfriends and girlfriends.
“Identical to we see in gaming, proper, it’s completely regular to be interacting with a personality. It doesn’t appear fairly a stretch to me in any respect to say that perhaps 50% or extra of our on-line interactions are going to begin to be with bots,” she stated. “And as bots get higher and higher at simulating and emulating human conduct, language and feelings, they are going to be a really regular factor.”
And so marrying that AI and laptop imaginative and prescient with a social community turned the plan. When Secure Diffusion began taking off final yr, it sparked the concept to make it much more enjoyable and straightforward to make use of. As a sort of bot, BeFake can contribute content material alongside what folks create themselves.
It turned out it was a problem for AI to work with candid photographs, versus poring by way of 20 footage of somebody earlier than it got here up with one thing acceptable. The app wanted to be straightforward and quick.
With the ultimate app, you may take a candid photograph after which write a textual content immediate to generate photos based mostly on that photograph with the press of a button.
“We jokingly say it’s like from boring to banger in 5 seconds,” Garcia Dumont stated. “The pretend stuff was the place we began. Now we’re beginning out with an actual consumer — it’s you. You acknowledge it as you’re taking your image, and also you rework it with AI and you continue to comprehend it’s you. You possibly can push the envelope of who you’re, however it’s nonetheless you on the middle of it.”
You possibly can faucet prompts out there from BeFake, like, “Make me scorching” or “put me in outerspace with planets throughout.”
Producing correct prompts is sort of an artwork. And producing too many photos could be costly. So, the group needed to give attention to getting usable photos one out of two instances. That required a variety of work on the backend and on the fashions.
“With only a few phrases, individuals are getting again a picture that they love and that’s actually enjoyable and thrilling,” Garcia Dumont stated. “The entire level is that that is an antidote to BeReal. Being genuine is extraordinarily tense. It’s excessive stress and it turns into not that enjoyable. That makes social means too exhausting.”
Working the corporate
Garcia Dumont stated the corporate is totally distant. She stated she has loved it extra so than the earlier gaming work in a single respect. She believes there may be extra respect for expertise than there was in gaming, the place it was “exhausting” having to show to others that one was competent. The work resembles gaming in a single respect. A world of AI bots is lots just like the non-player characters in video games, the place gamers are accustomed to the concept of taking part in amongst bots.
On the social entrance, Garcia Dumont desires to show extra people who find themselves present customers of content material into creators of content material, primarily by making complicated applied sciences extra accessible. For now, the corporate focuses on producing enjoyable nonetheless photos, however finally it may transfer to video.
The corporate has raised a seed funding spherical from Khosla Ventures, Subsequent Coast Ventures and Joe Lonsdale. Over time, the corporate’s problem will probably be in having access to the sort of computing energy it wants for AI processing. And so, like several firm, BeFake has to get the stability proper in relation to giving customers the facility of generative AI totally free and charging them for the compute they use.
For many who turn out to be energy customers of BeFake, the corporate will cost a subscription price and customers can purchase credit to generate extra photos. However those that aren’t as diehard can generate photos totally free.
Studying from gaming
One of many issues she introduced from gaming? She stated, “A powerful perception that folks can forge very deep and significant connections with folks that they don’t even know. It doesn’t want to begin together with your buddy base or your contact listing or your faculty. You possibly can truly construct a community of people that bond round a shared curiosity. And so, for gaming, for cellular gaming, the shared curiosity is in video games. For a social community, the shared pursuits could be the enjoyable of producing actually intelligent and artistic AI masterpieces. You possibly can simply marvel at what anyone else was in a position to create.”
One other factor that Machine Zone taught her is that the individuals who succeed are those who by no means hand over.
“You can’t cease. It doesn’t matter what number of instances you get punched within the face,” she stated. “You simply get again up and prepare to get punched once more. If you wish to be an app developer, you higher have a thick pores and skin. You higher be able to battle. And also you simply must have an unbelievable will to succeed as a result of it’s extraordinarily aggressive.”
Machine Zone was additionally the place Garcia Dumont discovered concerning the significance of machine studying, which helps with every part from monetization to constructing out content material. And he or she stated, “There’s an artistry to this. It’s simply ones and zeros. It’s not simply large compute. There’s an absolute artwork” to human communication.