Using AI tools for content creation is becoming an industry standard as the AI models behind the tools become more sophisticated. TechNode spoke with BOOLV founder and CEO Ken Wang at his BEYOND Expo 2023 in mid-May. BOOLV is his Hong Kong-based SaaS startup that creates AI-powered tools to accelerate content creation in marketing for overseas e-commerce.
Founded by Wang in 2021, BOOLV offers a growing number of new e-commerce brands and platforms, including baby clothing retailer Patpat, fast fashion platform Cider, and clothing site Cozinen. Mr. Wang and his team of core engineers have previously worked for Tesla, Royal Bank and ByteDance and are familiar with data processing, AI and product management.
BOOLV has two main services: Video Maker, an AI tool that helps retailers create marketing clips, and Booltool, a marketing content platform that provides copy, photo and video creation tools.
Main Quote: “In the future, the majority of commercial videos will be generated using machine-assisted (AI). Video will become the most popular form of content consumption, but the challenges that come with it are Production costs are high, which is why it’s important to have productivity tools in place to combat this problem.We’re helping small businesses around the world produce high-value video in the most efficient way possible. We aim to help you create
Below is a Q&A excerpt from the interview. This interview was conducted in Chinese and was translated, condensed and edited for clarity.
What is your company’s biggest competitive advantage?
Our understanding of short videos for e-commerce. How video clips are processed within the product, such as video matting and background removal, is based on a unique AI model. It has nothing to do with the general large model.
We also help brands generate unique videos for the best return on investment. For example, we analyzed a number of video scripts to determine which tone would be suitable for a particular advertising objective and provided those suggestions as features. Consider various factors such as transition effects and AI-generated content such as virtual characters to achieve the desired effect. We have developed countless scripts and some of the best performing video formats on the market.
These products are not purely technical. It’s about breaking down the video and refining best practices for a specific purpose. We create value by sharing this knowledge with users around the world. This is the core of our competitiveness.
BOOLV’s products focus on the e-commerce field. As large-scale AI models evolve and fall in cost, I fear that tools like yours that target specific needs will be overshadowed or replaced by more generalized models. Are you worried?
we’re not worried about that. From a technical point of view, the results are likely to be similar. However, we expect performance to continue to improve as we are doing more targeted data training.
Some features use ChatGPT’s API directly without much tweaking. But that’s okay because we understand user pain points and needs across e-commerce and try to find application-oriented solutions. Whether you stack multiple models, use a model you trained yourself, or use a model at scale, users ultimately care about the end result.
Our product is all-in-one, addressing the user’s entire workflow problem when creating content for e-commerce. Some users can use the generalized model for some tasks, but it’s not suitable for everyone. We also offer competitive pricing for packaged solutions.
Are you worried about big companies like Adobe and Microsoft embedding AI into their existing tools? For example, Microsoft is turning its Office suite into Copilot. In the future, would you be worried if AI capabilities were built into major video creation tools like Adobe Premiere?
While these big players cater to a wider range of users, we focus on specific needs in e-commerce, so we’re less worried about that.
For example, Adobe probably won’t invest in face swapping because it’s not a popular demand. Face swapping is frequently used in certain e-commerce scenarios. Let’s say you want 5-6 different models showing the same specific outfit. Or maybe you want to replace the model’s face with a face of another ethnicity. These are very specific and frequent requirements in the e-commerce sector. Users in other fields may not be able to use this.
And even if these big companies decide to incorporate such functionality, it probably won’t be as good as what we offer. We train and optimize our model specifically for e-commerce, so we’re not too worried about that.
