Flora is building an AI-powered ‘infinite canvas’ for creative professionals

With just a few words, AI models can be asked to make a story, an image or even a short film. But according to Weber Wong, these models are all ‘made by non-creatives for other non-creatives to feel creative’.

In other words, they are not built for real creative professionals. That is something that Wong hopes to change FloraA new startup where he is the founder and CEO.

Flora was launched this week, complete with a manifesto Explaining with “AI Creative Tools must be more than toys for generating AI -Lop” and describing Wong and his team as “obsessed with building a power tool that will shape the future of creative work in depth.”

The Manifesto positions Flora as something other than existing AI tools, which “make it easy to make, but have no creative control” and of existing creative software, which “controls users, but are non-intuition and time-consuming.”

Flora does not try to build better generative AI models. Wong argued that one of the most important insights of the startup is that “models are not creative tools.” Instead, Flora offers an “infinite canvas” that integrates with existing models – it is a visual interface where users can generate blocks of text, images and video.

“The model does not matter, the technology does not matter,” Wong told me “it is about the interface.”

For example, a user can start by turning on a flora to make an image of a flower and then ask for details about the image, with those details that lead to more prompts and varied images, with each step and variation mapped on the aforementioned canvas, which can also be shared for cooperation with customers.

Wong told me that he wants Flora to be useful for all artists and creatives, but the company is initially focused on working with visual design agencies. In fact, it is repeated on the product with feedback from designers at the famous desk Pentagram.

The goal, said Wong, is to allow a designer at Pentagram “to do 100x more creative work”, say by making a logo design and then quickly generating 100 variations. He compared it with the evolution of the musical composition – where Mozart “needed a whole orchestra to play his music”, a musician today can do it all “from his garage in New Jersey with Ableton, making and placing it on SoundCloud.”

Wong has a background in both art and technology itself, after he had worked as an investor at Menlo Ventures, but left when he realized: “I was not the person I would have back.” Determined to become the kind of founder that is worth investing in, he eventually joined the interactive telecommunication program of New York University, a graduated program aimed at the use of technology to create art.

When Flora launched an Alpha version in August, Wong decided to ‘launch with’ An art project That showed our real-time AI technology, ‘with the Flora start page with a live feed from a GoPro camera on the head of Wong, and website visitors who are given the opportunity to use AI to stylize the images after registering for the Flora waiting list.

Given his background, Wong knows that there are artists and professionals who are skeptical or are even fierce against the use of AI in art – in fact pentagram generated some controversy Last year when the Midjourney used to make the illustration style for a project with the US government.

Wong said that where existing models have been embraced by ‘AI -inburen’, he hopes that Flora can win the ‘AI curious’, and ultimately it can be useful enough that even ‘ai -haters’ feel that they should try it.

When I expressed concern that AI models can be trained without taking copyright and intellectual property into account, Wong noted that Flora does not train AI models itself (because it uses the models of other companies), and added: “We will follow social standards.”

And although he is passionate not to want Flora to be used to unleash a flood of AI-Lop (“We are going to get hats that say” anti-ai slop “”), he suggested that instead artists will enable “new aesthetic and creative possibilities” to unlock in the same way, in the same way, “” Kodak’s brownie -camera transformed photography by making the lake casual and accessible.

Flora does not reveal financing details, but the backers include A16Z Games Speedrun, Menlo Ventures and Long Journey Ventures, as well as angels from Midjourney, Stability and Pika. The product is available for free with a limited number of projects and generated content, and then the professional prices starts at $ 16 per month.