A screenshot from LTX Studio, a forthcoming AI video editing tool from Israel's Lightricks. Image: Lightricks
Lightricks, the Israeli startup behind Facetune and Photoleap, announced its most ambitious offering yet. LTX Studio, a visual AI video tool that can generate characters, scenes, storyboards and even entire movies using only text descriptions.
Why it matters: Proponents argue such tools can help democratize the filmmaking process, while some creative professionals worry that generative AI tools will eliminate jobs and hurt the arts.
The big picture: There are a number of tools that create individual video scenes from prompts, including from Runway and the forthcoming Sora by OpenAI. LTX Studio is designed to allow for a greater degree of editing and control across a longer production.
How it works: Unlike Lightricks other tools, LTX Studio is browser-based, which means it should work across a wide range of devices including PCs, tablets and smartphones.
- Users write text descriptions that generate characters and plot and then choose from a variety of camera angles and styles, like "cinematic" or "anime." Music and audio can be added, and many of the elements can be changed and customized, with characters remaining consistent from scene to scene.
- The product won't be available until a March 27 event, but customers can join a waiting list to gain access after launch.
- Lightricks said the product will initially be free. CEO Zeev Farbman says the company will eventually charge, but hopes not to have a price for each edit made with generative AI, as some other tools require. "It just doesn't lend itself to the creative process, he said.
Between the lines: Lightricks expects the first version of the software to be used more for smaller efforts or commercial storyboarding and pre-production than for creating finished movies.
- Over time, he expects software like LTX Studio will lead to a greater range of film projects being produced. "Very small crews will be able to create some amazing stuff," he said.
Lightricks has been working on LTX Studio since last year, with about a quarter of the company now devoted to the project.
- Longer term, Farbman has said he expects many areas of software will be disrupted as AI simplifies complex processes that once required both expensive software and significant expertise.
- AI is a "game-changer, meaning that we completely need to revisit our technological stack because it's obsolete," Farbman told Axios in December. "It's true for us. It's true for Adobe, Autodesk, any toolmaker."
Zoom in: Lightricks created a video trailer for Axios, in a steampunk style and based on the prompt: "An intrepid journalist tries to find love and truth in a world dominated by a brainwashed populace and machines that confidently spew gibberish."
- Here is the video, created by Lightricks using LTX Studio.