Cinematic Revolution: Irreverent Labs Secures Samsung Funding for DIY Movie Generation

0:00I think really in this booming landscape of generative AI, where everything from chatbox to text to image generators are popping off. Irreverent Labs essentially is carving out its own kind of unique path. So it's based in Bellevue, Washington, right? Now in Palo Alto, a little unique. This startup has just secured, as I mentioned earlier, a big influx of funding, which is led by Samsung Next. So although the exact amount remains undisclosed, according to Samsung's corporate policy, it's kind of annoying, right? You want to know how much money they're taking in because then you can kind of forecast what you think they're going to be doing with it and what the implications are.

0:39And sometimes when they get these corporate investments, it just makes it a little bit trickier because Samsung wants to keep it under wraps for the time being. But in any case, Irreverent Labs isn't exactly a newcomer in the whole funding game. So the startup has actually been founded back in 2021, not that long ago, but it's raised an impressive$45 million last year in a round led by Andresen Horowitz, A16Z, right? And initially, it was gaining a lot of media attention as a blockchain company. So Irreverent developed a robot cockfighting game called Mecha Fight Club that leveraged non-fungible tokens, right?

1:17NFTs. However, the company now emphasizes that the game was essentially a public demonstration of their large machine learning model. So their end game, according to the CEO, Raul Sood, is to let users create videos using multiple inputs ranging from text to images to audio. Really interesting concept. I know that they're going to get a lot of criticism as like, oh, you just raised money as like an NFT, web three crypto kind of company. Now AI is a big thing. You're pivoting and you're saying like, oh, that stuff was really just kind of the precursor. That's a criticism they're going to get. So they're going to have to come up with how they sort of respond to that.

1:54I mean, in any case, I think they have raised a lot of money and kind of getting someone like Samsung on their cap table now, I think is a good move, really building some credibility and showing that perhaps they are more than an internet fad with NFTs or something like that. So I think the collaboration with Samsung isn't merely financial. It's also strategic. So Sud shared that part of the reason they chose to work more closely with Samsung was to kind of tap into the tech giants portfolio companies that might want to use irrelevant labs API. So additionally, the startup is going to collaborate with Samsung's devices unit to broaden its distribution strategy, which will be very interesting to see how that actually plays out, right?

2:38If something is going to get embedded into new Samsung devices or something like that. So the story of Irreverent Labs really began with two seasoned entrepreneurs. So there was Raul Sood and David Reschino. So these co-founders first crossed paths back in 2011 when they were both working at Microsoft, where they initiated Microsoft Venture. So, Sued later left to dive into a new gaming venture while Raskino kind of started his own venture fund in 2014. But the two of them essentially kind of got back together and kind of hit up their partnership again in 2021 after Sued's previous company was acquired.

3:16And I think that their complementary aspirations, one focusing on the business application of AI and the other on entertainment, really kind of converged to form Irreverent Labs, which they characterized as a, quote, automated entertainment company. So initially focused on leveraging AI for video games, the company soon realized that there was a lot broader canvas of possibilities for them. And so they kind of shifted gears towards allowing users to create various types of short videos, including 3D. And they said, quote, at Irreverent, we're on a mission to make it possible for anyone to create compelling short form video entertainment with AI sued said that and then he also went on to kind of explain that users are going to be able to upload essentially a short video prompt and the platform will generate a high quality video based on it so the company plans to extend this feature to accept text and other forms of input to help users direct the videos think of how interesting that would be right this is beyond just saying create a video of x y z but like imagine if you could go on to mid-journey, generate an image of like the landscape or the specific thing you want, throw that in there, then go and say like, you know, based off of this landscape and then throw another couple pictures and based off of these three characters, do a scene where blah, blah, blah, X, Y, and Z is happening.

4:32I think this is really kind of one of the missing pieces of making a coherent or really like consistent videos where you have like the same consistent theme and feel across the whole thing. If you could keep uploading pictures that were very representative of the landscape or of the shots you want to take, and you upload a picture of the character that you want in there, and then it would be able to work off of those to generate it. I think this would be the solution, because currently an AI video might just make a video of a specific character, but when you try to go to the next scene, the character might look slightly different, or the scene might have a slightly different mood.

5:05And I'm just seeing things like this with Runway. I'm sure they're going to come up with some solutions like this as well. But in any case, I think this is a really interesting take take and being able to upload multiple, right, like audio and image and video samples to kind of create a video that you're essentially directing, I think is a really, really interesting idea. So I think while irreverence initial audience is likely to be, you know, really kind of existing content creators on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, I think the long term vision is a lot more expansive. So the startup aims to really kind of democratize video production.

5:41That's what they say. And they're hoping to enable those without traditional experience to create compelling short form content. So it also has plans to target the developer ecosystem by releasing an API along with enterprise level customers. I think this is really smart and will be a big help if they're trying to get integrated into a lot of new startups and corporate offerings. And investor Joan Kim from Samsung Next summarized it, I would say fairly succinctly by saying, quote, the possibilities that irreverent labs technology unlocks are vast and the potential impact on the mobile devices in our pocket and the backpacks and televisions mounted on our living room walls are immense.

6:21From concept to reality, this revolutionary model bridges the gap between imagination and execution. So I think with a lot of really powerful backers and quite an ambitious roadmap, I think irreverent labs is poised to become a big player in the AI generated content arena. And now I think it's really just left to be said how they execute. And that's definitely something that we're going to be watching.