Interview with Wu Xinhong, founder of Meitu: The layout of AIGC needs to stick to the "artisan spirit"

Original source: Guangming.com

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI

The rise of generative artificial intelligence represented by ChatGPT has caused all walks of life to be "involved" in a new industrial revolution, and the field of visual design is also setting off "storms and waves".

Recently, Meitu released 7 new products in one go, including AI visual creation tool WHEE, AI broadcast video tool Start Shooting, desktop AI video editing tool WinkStudio, Meitu Design Studio 2.0, which focuses on AI business design, and AI digital human The generation tool DreamAvatar, Meitu AI assistant RoboNeo, and Meitu visual model MiracleVision, etc.

The release of such intensive AI products has caused quite a stir in the industry. On the day of the product release, Meitu’s Hong Kong stock rose by 21.28%.

In fact, as early as 13 years ago, Meitu started the layout of AI technology. In 2010, MT Lab (Meitu Imaging Research Institute) was established to focus on computer vision. In 2013, the focus was on deep learning. By 2016, Meitu had the prototype of the AIGC product - "hand-painted selfie", which was widely welcomed by users all over the world. Since November last year, Meitu AIGC products have entered an explosive period.

Wu Xinhong, founder, chairman and CEO of Meitu, introduced that after the release of 7 products, Meitu has realized the advancement from the life scene to the productivity scene, and gradually formed an AI product built from the bottom layer, the middle layer and the application layer. ecology.

At the application layer, Meitu innovates and explores in the fields of AI pictures, AI video, AI design, and AI digital humans, and Meitu Xiuxiu realizes the aggregation of AI image services; at the middle layer, Meitu provides the Meitu AI open platform and the Meitu creative platform , Meitu’s AI assistant RoboNeo; the bottom layer is the MiracleVision large visual model, which provides AI model capabilities for all Meitu products.

In Wu Xinhong's view, in the future, with the close integration of AI and video productivity tools, the threshold for creating high-quality content will continue to be lowered, and the production efficiency of many industries will also continue to improve.

On the road of pursuing "aesthetic AI", Meitu has always maintained a "sense of crisis". Wu Xinhong bluntly said that making products "can't be fake", and this "artisan spirit" has also received positive feedback from users-driven by AI, as of June 18, the number of Meitu's global VIP members has increased from last year The 4.5 million announced by the Image Festival increased to 7.19 million.

"The rapid growth of the number of VIP members has also allowed our subscription revenue to exceed advertising revenue, opening the second curve of Meitu's commercialization." Wu Xinhong said, "In the past, Meitu mainly served life scenes, such as shooting, photo editing, and video editing. , social sharing. In the AI era, in addition to life scenes, Meitu will provide more productivity scene services.”

In the view of this art student-born technology company CEO, the value of tools will usher in a big explosion in the AI era. "The significance of AI to tools is like the significance of electricity to electrical appliances. The discovery of electricity has promoted the industrial revolution, and the development of AI has brought us into the era of intelligence. AI is becoming the energy that promotes the transformation of tool efficiency."