Welcome to Eye on AI, with AI reporter Sharon Goldman. In this edition…a TikTok-like AI video app that is built for Gen Z…Challenges renting San Francisco apartments during the AI boom…TSMC profit surges 39% to hit yet another record on AI chip demand…Spotify partners with Sony, Universal, Warner and more to develop AI music products.
Demi Guo, the 26-year-old founder of AI video company Pika, holds degrees in mathematics and computer science. But she’s also always had a creative streak, including writing poetry, and she loves showing off on social media with image and video tools.
That’s why she dropped out of her Stanford Ph.D program and co-founded Pika in April 2023 with aspiring animator and fellow Ph.D student Chenlin Meng. Just as AI video companies like Runway were starting to get hot, the duo, after experimenting with making long-form generative AI films, decided to create an easier-to-use AI video generator—sparking interest from top Silicon Valley investors like Nat Friedman.
Now, has Pika has raised about $135 million at a $470 million valuation and boasts 16.4 million users across several creative apps. It recently launched a new TikTok-like AI video app, also called Pika, that is already trending, and last week it debuted a new feature in that app called Predictive Video. Unlike other video tools which require long prompts to generate good results, Predictive Video allows users to upload a selfie and say something simple, like “make me a rock star,” or “I’m giving a TED Talk,” or “make me sing in Japanese”; the tool then infers your intent, delivering a complete video with a script, music and dance moves, background, lighting, and camera angles and visual effects.
Instead of just producing a standalone video clip, Pika can anticipate motion and interaction, producing a sort of mixed reality by allowing users to weave themselves or real-world elements into AI-generated scenes—something that traditionally would take significant animation skills and production time.
All of it is tailor-made for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, cohorts which have grown up on short-form video and uses online platforms to express themselves and share their thoughts, Guo explained. “Most nonprofessionals will never try to create a film using generative AI, but lots of people like to make short videos,” she said. “It’s really about self-expression.”
That, she insists, is the opposite of what has become a catch-all tool for AI video: Slop. There may be artificial content at scale, but Pika is meant to, ironically, use generative AI to help people get more real, she says.
“We really believe it is not meaningless content,” she emphasized. “It’s about self-expression, the personality is actually real behind it. So a person who is funny will post funny videos, or a person that is very egocentric will post egocentric videos.” Some people like to use one visual effect, or create a video that captures a vibe or a mood, or simply use the tool to do what they wish they could do in real life, she added.
“It helps you achieve that in some sense,” she said. “Maybe you are a really bad singer, but in AI, you can sing very well, like a pop star.”
Pika is stepping into a competitive landscape dominated by giants like OpenAI’s Sora and Meta’s new Vibes, but it’s carving out a very different niche. Sora is focused on cinematic, photorealistic text-to-video generation, and Vibes is about bringing AI-generated video feeds into Meta’s massive ecosystem. But Pika positions itself closer to the ground-level habits of Gen Z and Gen Alpha: It’s less about polished productions at scale, and more about emotion, creativity and interaction for everyday storytelling.
With that, here’s more AI news.
Sharon Goldmansharon.goldman@fortune.com@sharongoldman
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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