London-based AI artistic studio Surprise Studios has raised $12 million in seed funding to scale manufacturing amid a push to deliver AI-generated content material into the leisure business.
The spherical was led by Atomico, alongside current traders LocalGlobe and Blackbird, and builds on Surprise’s pre-seed funding, which included executives from ElevenLabs, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI.
Surprise will use the contemporary funds to double its engineering staff and speed up its push into IP possession and authentic content material manufacturing. The staff just lately produced an AI music video for Lewis Capaldi’s ‘One thing within the Heavens’, created with DeepMind, YouTube, and Common Music Group. Surprise additionally launched its first authentic manufacturing, the “Past the Loop” anthology collection.
Surprise is engaged on a number of industrial and authentic tasks for launch subsequent yr, together with an upcoming documentary with Campfire Studios, the manufacturing firm behind Netflix documentaries “The Menendez Brothers” and “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.” Campfire’s CEO Ross Dinerstein is an investor within the startup.
The drive for IP possession emerges amid a wave of authorized actions from Hollywood producers concentrating on AI firms — each for coaching fashions on their content material and for producing outputs that includes copyrighted characters. Disney and Common Studios, for instance, have sued Chinese language firm MiniMax, in addition to AI picture generator Midjourney.
Surprise’s increase additionally comes as Netflix goes “all in” on generative AI as a option to make creatives extra environment friendly at storytelling.
AI stays a divisive problem in leisure, with artists involved that instruments powered by LLMs, which have usually been educated on their work with out consent, may threaten their livelihoods. OpenAI’s Sora 2 has come beneath explicit criticism for reproducing actors’ likenesses with out discover or consent.
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Surprise positions itself as “Hollywood with out borders,” serving to to make AI storytelling instruments accessible to all creators. The startup’s app serves as a hub connecting its group of creators with profession alternatives, collaborators, and assets, in line with the corporate.
“The following decade will outline what creativity appears to be like like within the age of AI,” mentioned Justin Hackney, chief industrial officer and co-founder of Surprise Studios. “Our mission is to make sure that this future belongs to the storytellers. Working with main studios, business pioneers, and grassroots filmmakers, we’re already making a bridge the place know-how and artistry develop collectively.”
Clarification: A earlier headline misstated OpenAI’s involvement in Surprise Studios.
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