In early June, the East London arts venue hosted an event to celebrate the release of Visions, the first major update to Lightricks' LTX Studios. The generative AI video editing software startup hosted a special event for media industry figures and digital creators to share insights on GenAI's evolution and innovation in the visual arts, as well as to showcase the groundbreaking new release.
The event, moderated by Sonya Barlow, was attended by senior Lightricks staff including CEO and Co-Founder Zeev Farbman, VP of Product Alon Ya'ar, and select guests. LTX Studio beta testers, top digital content creators, animators, filmmakers, and video marketing professionals came together to celebrate what is sure to be a watershed moment in the evolution of AI video editing.
As part of the evening, AI creators Omar Karim, Georgia Lewis Anderson and Lois Hinx presented a panel discussion on digital production, the impact of AI and the future for content creators.
What does the new release mean for AI video editing?
When a software company releases an update, it doesn't necessarily generate a lot of buzz, but the Visions event showed that GenAI video editing is a hot topic. Not only is everything GenAI getting a lot of attention right now, but AI video editing in particular is evolving extremely quickly.
“This new underlying technology has completely changed over the past two years. As a product team, we have to be extremely agile and move quickly. The pace of progress is incredible. For example, we go to bed with one model and one feature, and the next morning we wake up to a call from research or Zeev,” Alon Yar, vice president of product, said at the event. [Lightricks CEO Zeev Farbman] They're actually saying, 'Wow, everything has changed. We have to start from scratch.'”
It's fair to say that the release of Visions is more than just an update. It goes beyond an improved interface and aims to make your creative workflow more efficient and streamlined. Visions significantly speeds up the creative process by making it easy to create multiple video previews in seconds and make your entire story conform to a specific visual style with a single click, ensuring consistent characterization across your storyboards.
Incorporating GenAI into your pre-production workflow
One of the key focuses of the new release was to reduce the burden on users and make AI an integral part of any video creation process.
Ya'ar emphasized this point, saying, “There is a user on the other side of the screen, and we need to cater to their needs and workflows. We mapped out the different workflows and processes of creative professionals across different industries – marketing departments, ad agencies, filmmakers, small and large studios – and really looked at how LTX Studio could fit into their workflow or how AI could actually change it.”
This was also a topic of discussion during the panel discussion: While some feared that GenAI editing would put junior animators and 3D creators out of work, the three panelists instead focused on the benefits that GenAI video editing could bring.
Karim noted that AI-generated video apps level the playing field for talented creators on a budget. With such tools, there's no need for large 3D or sound departments or armies of stand-in animators. The app acts as an AI assistant, helping budding creators realize their vision without the headaches of expensive equipment or the lack of a large team.
There was general agreement that a tool like LTX Studio is most valuable for performing the small, time-consuming pre-production tasks that distract creators from their primary goal: storytelling. “We think Visions is about solving a fundamental challenge that our users are facing,” Yaar says. “We've really worked hard to understand their pain points and how they use LTX Studio, and not surprisingly, most of our users are using it for pre-production purposes. So Visions is about streamlining that pre-production use case.”
Empowering the AI video production community
The Visions launch event also highlighted the need for good-fashioned, face-to-face exchange of ideas and perspectives in the rapidly changing world of media production. Like artists for centuries, digital creators need communities to spark inspiration, refine concepts, and develop new ways of thinking and approaches to art.
GenAI video tools like LTX Studio don't need human assistants to perform tedious manual tasks or fill in skills like audio or 3D modeling that may be missing. But attendees at the event argued that the online community is growing to more than make up for that.
Lightricks CEO Zeev Farbman touched on this in his speech at the launch event, sharing his excitement at being able to be part of the creative process through his company's software.
“Early on in my career with pixel polishing, I realized that I wasn't a creator,” he says. “My CTO and I had some early conversations about this, and we realized that we're not artists, and no one is going to compose Beethoven's symphonies. But someone built the piano for Beethoven to compose his symphonies. And for us, as toolmakers, building a piano for you is a great source of inspiration.”
Conclusion
The Visions launch event was a key opportunity to boost the energy for creators to come together and share ideas. As more generative AI tools like LTX Studio hit the market and companies like Lightricks push the boundaries of GenAI in video creation, it will be even more important to build a strong community and enable discussion of the impact, benefits, and potential drawbacks of new technology.
