With just a few words, AI models can be prompted to create a story, an image, or even a short film. But according to Weber Wong, these models are all "made by non-creatives for other non-creatives to feel creative."
In other words, they're not built for actual creative professionals. That's something Wong is hoping to change with Flora, a new startup where he's founder and CEO.
Flora launched this week, complete with a manifesto declaring that "AI creative tools should be more than toys for generating AI slop" and describing Wong and his team as "obsessed with building a power tool that will profoundly shape the future of creative work."
The manifesto positions Flora as something different from existing AI tools, which "make it easy to create, but lack creative control," and from existing creative software, which gives users "control, but are unintuitive & time-consuming."
Flora isn't trying to build better generative AI models. Wong argued that one of the startup's key insights is that "models are not creative tools." So instead, Flora offers an "infinite canvas" that integrates with existing models -- it's a visual interface where users can generate blocks of text, images, and video.
"The model does not matter, the technology does not matter," Wong told me "It's about the interface."
For example, a user could start by prompting Flora to create an image of a flower, then ask for details about the image, with those details leading to more prompts and varied images, with each step and variation mapped out on the aforementioned canvas, which can also be shared for collaborative work with clients.
Wong told me he wants Flora to be useful to any and all artists and creatives, but the company is initially focused on working with visual design agencies. In fact, it's iterating on the product with feedback from designers at famed agency Pentagram.
The goal, Wong said, is to allow a designer at Pentagram to "just do 100X more creative work," say by creating a logo design and then quickly generating 100 variations. He compared it to the evolution of musical composition -- where Mozart "needed an entire orchestra to play his music," a musician can get it all done "from his garage in New Jersey with Ableton, making it himself and posting it on SoundCloud."
Wong has a background in both art and technology himself, having worked as an investor at Menlo Ventures but leaving when he realized, "I was not the person I'd back." Determined to become the kind of founder worth investing in, he eventually joined New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, a graduate program focused on using technology to create art.
When Flora launched an alpha version in August, Wong decided to "launch with an art project that showcased our real-time AI technology," with the Flora homepage showing a live feed from a GoPro camera on Wong's head, and website visitors getting the opportunity to use AI to stylize the footage after signing up for the Flora 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 generated some controversy last year when it used Midjourney to create the illustration style for a project with the US government.
Wong said that where existing models have been embraced by "AI natives," he's hoping Flora can win over the "AI curious," and eventually even become useful enough that even "AI haters" feel they have to give it a try.
When I raised concerns that AI models can be trained without regard for copyright and intellectual property, Wong noted that Flora isn't training any AI models itself (because it's using other companies' models), adding, "We will follow societal standards."
And while he's passionate about not wanting Flora to be used to unleash a flood of AI slop ("We're going to get hats that say 'anti-AI slop'"), he suggested that instead, the startup will allow artists to unlock "new aesthetic and creative possibilities," in the same way Kodak's Brownie camera transformed photography by making it more casual and accessible.
Flora isn't disclosing funding details, but its backers include A16Z Games. The product is available for free with a limited number of projects and generated content, and then professional pricing starts at $16 per month.
