Latest news with #Asteria
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI video startup Moonvalley lands $53M, according to filing
Roughly a month after Moonvalley, a Los Angeles-based startup developing AI tools for video creation, said it secured $43 million in new funding, the company has raised more, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing, submitted Thursday, reveals that Moonvalley actually landed (so far) around $53 million total from a group of 14 unnamed investors. The filing indicates that this is an additional $10 million in cash, rather than a whole new round. It brings the company's total raised to about $124 million, estimates Pitchbook, following on the heels of Moonvalley's $70 million seed round last November. Moonvalley declined to comment. The wide availability of tools to build video generators has led to such an explosion of providers that the space is becoming saturated. Startups such as Runway, Lightricks, Genmo, Pika, Higgsfield, Kling, and Luma, as well as tech giants like OpenAI, Alibaba, and Google, are releasing models at a fast clip. In many cases, little distinguishes one model from another. Moonvalley's Marey model, built in collaboration with a new AI animation studio called Asteria, offers customization options like fine-grained camera and motion controls, and can generate 'HD' clips up to 30 seconds long. Moonvalley claims it's also lower risk than some other video generation models from a legal perspective. But where Moonvalley is attempting to differentiate itself — hence the high VC interest — is on the data it's using to train its models, as well as the safeguards in its video creation tools. Many generative video startups train models on public data, some of which is invariably copyrighted. These companies argue that fair-use doctrine shields the practice, but that hasn't stopped rights holders from lodging complaints and filing cease and desists. Moonvalley says it's working with partners to handle licensing arrangements and package videos into datasets that the company then purchases. The approach is similar to Bria's and Adobe's, the latter of which procures content for training from creators through its proprietary Adobe Stock platform. Moonvalley is also crafting an interface for its model. The company's software, which it hasn't previewed publicly yet, has storyboarding and "granular" clip adjustment tools, Moonvalley's co-founders revealed in recent interviews. Marey can generate videos not only from text prompts but sketches, photos, and other video clips, claims Moonvalley. Naeem Talukdar, who previously led product growth at Zapier, founded Moonvalley with former DeepMind scientists Mateusz Malinowski and Mik Binkowski. John Thomas joined as Moonvalley's COO — he and Talukdar had founded another startup, Draft, several years ago. Moonvalley also counts Asteria head Bryn Mooser as a co-founder. Many artists and creators are understandably wary of video generators, as they threaten to upend the film and television industry. A 2024 study commissioned by the Animation Guild, a union representing Hollywood animators and cartoonists, estimates that more than 100,000 U.S.-based film, television, and animation jobs will be disrupted by AI by 2026. Moonvalley intends to allow creators to request their content be removed from its models, let customers delete their data at any time, and offer an indemnity policy to protect its users from copyright challenges. Unlike some 'unfiltered' video models that readily insert a person's likeness into clips, Moonvalley is also committing to building guardrails around its tools. Like OpenAI's Sora, Moonvalley's models will block certain content, like NSFW phrases, and won't allow users to prompt them to generate videos of specific people or celebrities. "We founded Moonvalley to make generative video technology that works for filmmakers and creative professionals," Moonvalley wrote in a blog post in March. "That means addressing fear and distrust, as well as solving technical problems that keep generative AI from being a realistic tool for professional production." This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cinephile Natasha Lyonne Defends AI Film ‘Uncanny Valley': 'Nothing I Love More Than Movies'
Natasha Lyonne had a long press line clamoring for her attention Thursday night at the second season premiere of Peacock's Poker Face in Hollywood. The veteran actress, whose multi-hyphenate duties on the critically acclaimed comedy series include writing, directing, starring and executive producing, didn't have time to stop for every outlet before she was needed on the American Legion Post 43 stage to introduce the screening alongside her partner-in-crime Rian Johnson. So she did something rare (and appreciated among the journalists left waiting outside) by heading to the stage to deliver those comments only to return to the red carpet and give every reporter some of her undivided attention. After detailing the 'magic' of the new season thanks to a killer line-up of high-profile guest stars, The Hollywood Reporter asked Lyonne about that other new project of hers on the horizon — an artificial intelligence-infused film Uncanny Valley. More from The Hollywood Reporter Natasha Lyonne Set to Make Feature Directorial Debut With AI Film - With Help From Jaron Lanier (Exclusive) 'Poker Face' Season 2 Trailer Heads Back on the Road With Natasha Lyonne Kumail Nanjiani on Playing a Florida Cop Named Gator Joe in 'Poker Face' Season 2: "Did You Send This One to Me by Mistake?" News of the project broke two days before the Poker Face premiere and caused a stir. As reported by THR, Lyonne is set to make her feature directorial debut on the film from a script she wrote with Brit Marling and both are on board to star. Set in the world of immersive video games and said to blend live-action and game elements, Uncanny Valley centers on a teenage girl named Mila who becomes unmoored by a hugely popular AR video game in a parallel present. Partners on the project — designed to offer a 'radical new cinematic experience,' per an Asteria representative — include technology innovator Jaron Lanier, the AI-based studio Asteria (founded by Lyonne with partner Bryn Mooser) and Moonvalley. It was obvious that the buzz had reached Lyonne, who was quick to defend the project during her time with THR. 'Of course the movie's going to be shot like a real movie. Now I'm really threatening to just shoot it on 35 [mm] or something to prove the point because [we are using] real-life human cinematographers and production designers and all that, of course,' explained Lyonne. 'I'm a Mr. Moviefone. There's nothing I love more than movies. Cinema is my very celluloid blood that runs through these veins. I love nothing more than filmmaking, the filmmaking community, the collaboration of it, the tactile fine art of it. I love every aspect of it — it's so incredible. I understand my own church, in a way, even when the rest of the world doesn't make sense. In no way would I ever want to do anything other than really create some guardrails or a new language.' The guardrails she referenced relate to how Moonvalley relies on an AI model called 'Marey' that is built on data that has been copyright cleared, unlike other viral industry leaders. 'I have this new studio that I founded, Asteria, with Bryn Mooser, and we found these amazing engineers at Moonvalley, and they agreed off this idea of why is every model dirty, like Runway and OpenAI? And why are they building it off of stolen data? Why do cell phones just have stolen data? It's a problem,' Lyonne said. 'What's so incredible about Marey is that it's the first underlying foundational model that you build on top of that is actually on copyrighted license, and you can go in with your concept artist and your storyboard artist and start building out a world.' Lyonne then praised her collaborators like Marling and Lanier, the latter of whom she called 'a pretty heavy hitter in this space' and a 'philosophical, ethical guy.' She added: 'We're getting to really find these sort of rules of play and start to understand that there might be a way to actually have some artist protection and carve out within all this that keeps us doing the thing that we love.' Speaking of that affection, Lyonne then recalled how close she was with the iconic filmmaker Nora Ephron. 'She was a real mentor of mine — I played a lot of poker — and she would say, 'Whatever you do, don't be a female filmmaker. You're only allowed one mistake and they never let you work again.' Of course she made so many hits that wasn't exactly true, but it was an interesting lesson about the opportunities that are given or not. I really see this as a way to get a chance to make those sort of Avengers-style sequences or something that are essentially green screen and CGI. That's mostly what [AI] is going to be used for, and that's what the word 'hybrid' means here.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
