Develop Skillz

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

The startup behind that deep-fake David Beckham video just raised $3M

Email, RSS Follow
Pin It

The recent global campaign showing Malaria survivors speaking through David Beckham to help raise awareness around the Malaria Must Die initiative spooked a lot of people:

The campaign has already exceeded 400 million impressions globally.

But a behind-the-scenes video explains how the video was made:

The campaign was a joint collaboration between RG/A, Ridley Scott Associates and the clever video startup Synthesia, for Malaria No More.

And it turns out there’s a huge commercial imperative over this cool technology.

Video production today is highly unscaleable. It’s a physical process with many cameras, many studios and many actors. Once a marketing, product or entertainment video has been shot it’s very difficult to quickly and affordably edit the creative or translate into different languages.

As co-founder Victor Riparbelli Rasmussen tells me: “We believe generating semi or fully artificial video is more efficient. This digital creation process is already the industry standard with images through applications like PhotoShop. We’re enabling the same for video.”

Synthesia says it can reduce the need to go on set to produce video content. Rather than shooting a new video, it can edit existing assets to create derivative international and personalized videos.

Rasmussen says: “Our solution allows companies to 10x their video output for a tenth of the costs of conventional production. A simple interview-style video can easily involve many people and extensive production costs across the organization. With our solution, a marketing manager at an Advertising Agency, a Fortune 1000 company or small business can create a new video from behind her screen and have it delivered back within 48 hrs.”

The UK based startup has now raised $3.1 million, with the financing led by LDV Capital, early investor Mark Cuban, and new investors MMC Ventures, Seedcamp, Martin Varsavsky’s VAS Ventures, TransferWise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus, Tiny VC, and advertising executive Nigel Morris.

“Video production is exponentially increasing but it is extremely challenging to internationalize and easily personalize advertising, marketing, and e-learning videos across cultures,” says Evan Nisselson, General Partner at LDV Capital. “Synthesia is leveraging computer vision and artificial intelligence to revolutionize video production for brands and creators.”

Synthesia was founded by a team of researchers and entrepreneurs from UCL, Stanford, TUM and Foundry. Notably, Prof Matthias Niessner, one of the co-founders of the company, is behind some of the most well-recognized research projects in the field Deep Video Portraits and Face2Face.

The London based startup came out of stealth in November 2018, airing their first public demo with the BBC, showcasing Synthesia technology by enabling newsreader Matthew Amroliwala speak three different languages.

Their customers already include global brands such as Accenture, McCann Worldgroup, Dallas Mavericks and Axiata Group.

But what about deep fakes and the potential for disinformation?

Synthesia says it has strong ethical guidelines and aims to ensure that all the content created is consensual and that actors are in control of their likeness.

So this is not software that you can just download from the web and apply to Bernie Saunder’s face.

Rasmussen says the company is actively working with governments and media organizations to create public awareness and develop technological security mechanisms to ensure that society gets to harness the benefits and reduce potential negative effects from synthetic media technologies.

Well, let’s hope so…

Email, RSS Follow
Pin It

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Articles

artificial-intelligence

SalesLoft nabs $70M at $500M valuation for its sales engagement platform

April 25, 2019 By itadmin

Cryptocurrency

A new cryptocurrency mining malware uses leaked NSA exploits to spread across enterprise networks

April 25, 2019 By itadmin

fake-video

The startup behind that deep-fake David Beckham video just raised $3M

April 25, 2019 By itadmin

virtual-reality-school

Labster scores $21M Series B to bring VR to STEM education

April 25, 2019 By itadmin

Internet connectivity projects unite as Alphabet spinout Loon grabs $125M from SoftBank’s HAPSMobile

April 25, 2019 By itadmin

computer-programming

How to source hard-to-fill programming positions

April 24, 2019 By itadmin

tesla

Elon Musk on taking Tesla private: ‘That ship has sailed’

April 24, 2019 By itadmin

tesla-car insurance

Tesla plans to launch an insurance product ‘in about a month’

April 24, 2019 By itadmin

Scientists pull speech directly from the brain

April 24, 2019 By itadmin

Apply to participate in the Hackathon at Disrupt San Francisco 2019

April 24, 2019 By itadmin

Latest green stuff

[instagram-feed]

Related Articles

  • artificial-intelligence

    SalesLoft nabs $70M at $500M valuation for its sales engagement platform

    Apr 25, 2019
  • Cryptocurrency

    A new cryptocurrency mining malware uses leaked NSA exploits to spread across enterprise networks

    Apr 25, 2019
  • virtual-reality-school

    Labster scores $21M Series B to bring VR to STEM education

    Apr 25, 2019
  • Internet connectivity projects unite as Alphabet spinout Loon grabs $125M from SoftBank’s HAPSMobile

    Apr 25, 2019
  • computer-programming

    How to source hard-to-fill programming positions

    Apr 24, 2019
  • tesla

    Elon Musk on taking Tesla private: ‘That ship has sailed’

    Apr 24, 2019
  • tesla-car insurance

    Tesla plans to launch an insurance product ‘in about a month’

    Apr 24, 2019
  • Scientists pull speech directly from the brain

    Apr 24, 2019
  • Apply to participate in the Hackathon at Disrupt San Francisco 2019

    Apr 24, 2019
  • Streaming-oscars

    The Oscars won’t change their rules to exclude streaming

    Apr 24, 2019

Copyright © 2021 DevelopSkillz.com

Privacy Policy · Terms of Use · Sitemap · Contact

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more.