AI models can be prompted with just a few simple words to create a story or image, and even a short video. Weber Wong says that these models were “made by noncreatives so other noncreatives can feel creative.”
They’re not designed for creative professionals. Wong hopes to change that with Florais a new startup in which he is the founder and CEO. Flora
launched this week. The manifesto describes Wong and his team, who are “obsessed” with building a tool that will “profoundly shape the future creative work.”
It positions Flora as a differentiator from existing AI tools that “make it easy to make, but lack creativity control,” as well as from existing creative software that gives users “control but is unintuitive and time-consuming.”
Flora doesn’t try to build better AI models. Wong said that Flora’s startup has a key insight that “models aren’t creative tools”. Instead, Flora offers a “visual interface” where users can create blocks of text and images. Wong told me that “the model doesn’t matter, and neither does the technology.” “It’s all about the interface.”
A user could, for example, ask Flora to create a picture of a flower. Then, they would ask for more details, and the result would be a variety of images. Each step and variation is mapped out in the canvas mentioned above, which can be shared with clients for collaborative work.
Wong said he wants Flora useful to all artists and creators, but that the company initially focuses on working with visual designers. It is actually iterating the product with feedback provided by designers at famed agency Pentagram
Wong said that the goal is to allow designers at Pentagram “just to do 100X more creativity,” for example, by creating a design of a logo and then quickly generating a hundred variations. He compared the development to the evolution of music composition, where Mozart “needed a whole orchestra to play his work,” but today a musician can do it “from his garage in New Jersey, using Ableton and making it himself, and posting it on SoundCloud.”
When Flora released an alpha version in august, Wong decided “to launch with Flora’s homepage showed a live feed of a GoPro camera mounted on Wong’s face. Website visitors were then given the option to style the footage using AI after signing up for Flora’s waitlist.
Given his background, Wong knows there are artists and professionals who are skeptical or even vehemently opposed to the use of AI in art — in fact, Pentagram Last year, it generated some controversywhen it used Midjourney for an illustration style on a project with U.S. Government. Wong stated that existing models are embraced by the “AI natives” but he hopes Flora will win over “AI curious” and eventually become so useful that even “AI haters” feel compelled to give it a go.
When questioned about the fact that AI models could be trained without regard to copyright or intellectual property, Wong pointed out that Flora doesn’t train any AI models (because it uses other companies’ models), and added, “We will adhere to societal standards.” Kodak’s Brownie camera transformed photography by making the medium more casual and accessible. Flora, which is not disclosing its funding details
has a16z Games Speedrun and Menlo Ventures as well as angels Midjourney, Stability and Pika as backers. The product can be downloaded for free, but only with a limited amount of projects and generated material. Professional pricing starts at $16 a month.
Anthony Ha, TechCrunch weekend editor. He worked as a reporter for Adweek, a senior at VentureBeat and a reporter for the Hollister-Free Lance. He was also vice president of content in a VC company. He lives in New York City. View Bio
