- Everyone should be able to create perfect photos of themselves, no matter your background situation, or experience level.
- The app allows users to generate unlimited photos of themselves in any setting, posture, clothing, hairstyle, or facial expression.
- The startup has raised $6m in Seed funding from a UK investor and plans to raise $10m in Series A funding this year.
Image enhancement apps with artificial intelligence can now turn your selfie pictures into hyper-realistic self-portraits and more visually appealing without the need for complex software or a professional photographer.
Hong Kong-based Artisse, a new kid on the block, claims to be the world’s first AI photographer despite many others out there on the app stores.
William Wu, the founder of Artisse, told TechChannel News that they have an AI technology that can replicate or produce super life-like photos and can produce any photos of anyone pretty much perfectly in a myriad of scenarios, outfits, hairstyles and more or even adjust lighting and ambience to match the mood.
People take more than 2.3 billion photos across the globe daily, he said and yet, the process of capturing the perfect shot remains complex, time-consuming and out of reach for many.
High demand
“Amateurs can take professional photoshoots with Artisse. The demand for consumer personal photos around the world in platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, etc., and B2B advertisements regularly pay a huge amount to do so. The market for photo creation is huge but very difficult to create professional photos.”
Moreover, he said that more than two billion Instagram users are posting many photos every day while the digital ad spend is worth $885 billion and $20 billion modelling agency turnover.
“For an average person to create an Instagram photo has to do their hair, and makeup and get out there for someone to take photos and a photographer. You need to pose for photos to take 100s of photos and edit them all. It is a pretty long journey and it is not just cost and time, you have to have a lot of expertise to create and take good photos.”
Power of perfect photos
The basic principle of Artisse is to upload 15 photos and let the AI train itself off your face and it takes about 40 minutes, similar to Remini and other AI photo apps on the market.
After the AI has trained itself once, Wu said that it is easy and you can take any natural photos of yourself from any place, just sitting on your sofa.
“We are just putting the power of perfect photos on to hands of everyone. We already have more than 150,000 downloads and the top new free photo app in Google Play Store in 20 different countries, as per AppBrain,” he said.
Even though it is free to download and with in-app payments when started, it has now become behind a paywall and the reason Wu said is that they have a cost to generate photos so “we went behind a paywall as we are seeing more downloads every day.”
However, he said that they will be launching a trial version soon.
Photos: A form of social currency
There are many similar apps such as Remini, Picsart, PicCollage, and AI Art Photo Editor, to name a few in the Google and Apple app stores and what makes Artisse stand out.
For this, Wu said that the difference is like between V1 and V10 automobile engines.
“When you open up Remini, you cannot type what you want and there are around 40 templates you can choose from. The background is either one or two colours and they don’t look natural. Sometimes it doesn’t look like you.
“As long as you train the AI correctly, the photo will not look like you. The flexibility is not there on Remini. Remini is like a very early version of ours and others are similar to Remini,” he said.
Moreover, he said that young people use photos as a form of social currency and it is more important than money for certain people.
“The audience we find is very broad and people do not want any photos to be uploaded and they want good photos as profiles. There are media influencers globally who are heavy users of good photos every day,” he said.
This will be the new way of taking photos in the future by using AI, he said and added that they are creating the world’s first AI advertisement company by using the same technology.
Bringing dead celebrities back to life
“We can bring dead celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe, back to life in a matter of minutes. We are doing test cases with 10 big clients and hope to sign contracts in the coming weeks,” Wu said.
“Our technology can create incremental revenue opportunities for models with simple inputs, without their physical involvement in the advertising process to drive increased revenue to models, and unlock significant opportunities for the commercialization of intellectual property across the creative advertising landscape.”
Among the app downloads, he said that two-thirds are females and have downloaded from every part of the world.
“We have around 10 per cent downloads from the UAE and Saudi Arabia despite not doing any marketing.”
The startup has raised $6 million in Seed funding from a UK investor and plans to raise $10 million in Series A funding this year.
Wu wants Artisse to be the number one app for taking pictures and creating the world’s biggest AI advertising company and the world’s largest AI talent agency as well.
The app is available on Google and Apple stores in 13 languages, including Hindi and Arabic.