Katelyn is a writer with CNET covering social media, AI and online services. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in media and journalism. You can often find her with a novel and an iced coffee during her time off.
I've tested a lot of AI-powered creative software, and when it comes to image (and now video) generators, there seem to be two options: You enter a prompt, you cross your fingers and hope the AI understands all the details and directions you want. Or you don't use AI at all and have to do everything manually in Photoshop or another program. I had seen very little that offers a nice middle ground... until Intangible AI.
Intangible is one of many startups taking advantage of new generative AI tech. Its flagship tool is a 3D modeling program that lets you type text prompts and create manipulatable, 3D scenes that can be turned into stills and videos. You get the kind of control like you're swiveling a camera on a set (or virtual set) without having to manually create every element in a scene. And it's all browser-based, meaning you don't need to download software. It's unlike any AI image or video generator I've seen before.
At first blush, you might not immediately think of times when you'd need to use a 3D model in your daily life. But for folks who are visual learners or who struggle with spatial intelligence and trying to imagine and move around physical spaces, it could be useful. Intangible said it's built for anyone, not just animators, but also used for tasks like visualizing advertising ideas or planning physical event spaces like wedding venues.
"If you're making a major Hollywood production or a triple-A game, you don't stop in Intangible. But for many people, the quality of what you get from Intangible is going to be more than enough for web applications, presentations and pitch materials," Charles Migos, CEO and co-founder of Intangible, told me in an interview.
The idea of Intangible began while Migos was vice president of product design at Unity, a global gaming software company. But when it became clear Unity wouldn't be able to launch the product, Migos left and started Intangible with co-founder Bharat Vasan in 2024. Since then, Intangible has received $4 million in funding from VCs and other angel investors. It's currently in a private beta. Intangible said beta users include production designers who have worked on CGI-intensive movies, including Star Wars and Shrek.
Intangible will be publicly released this June, Migos confirmed to CNET.
Intangible's lead product designer, Philip Metschan, gave me an early, exclusive look at how the program works. With a text prompt, he created a city full of buildings reminiscent of a 3D, AI-ed New York City. He pulled a character from a bank of pre-created elements and made her a runner. He personalized her appearance with a text prompt -- which stays the same as you make other edits -- and tweaked her pose to make her run. He could change the entire perspective of the shot, setting her into the foreground and making tweaks to the exact angle.
Metschan spent nearly 20 years at Pixar, working on beloved movies like Wall-E and The Incredibles 2. He's familiar with the exhaustive detail work that goes into producing something as high-quality as a blockbuster animated movie -- including how long it can take to get a bunch of leaders to agree on a creative direction. AI tools like Intangible are one way to help speed up that process because they can mock up lots of ideas in a fraction of the time it would take to do it manually. Even if AI images or videos are never used in the final product, AI can help bring artistic visions to life and help sell people on a general aesthetic or direction.
"A decision is the most expensive thing in a production pipeline," Metschan said. "Any tool that can speed that process up or make that iteration process more effective and collaborative is always great."
Metschan showed me one example of how Intangible can help speed up that process. He used Intangible to create a 49-second AI video to emulate a TV commercial. From beginning to end, it only took him 3 to 4 hours to produce, significantly shrinking the typical weeks-long production process of storyboarding, location scouting, casting and filming. He could also make big changes, like changing the weather in scenes, at any point during the creation process. The program saves the way you've characterized elements with prompts, and you can use those pre-existing elements on other canvases. So like Metschan showed me, he could make the same red Jeep drive through a forest path during the snow, rain and sunlight.
Inside Intangible, there are two different kinds of models working: one that recognizes and processes your prompts when you ask it to create things and another that creates those elements. You'll own whatever images and videos you make with Intangible, but there aren't any visible watermarks thus far, so you'll want to disclose that you used AI.
Intangible's leadership knows that not all creators will be on board with using generative AI. Creators have voiced many concerns, from job security to potential copyright infringement during model training to the flood of "AI slop" that's becoming increasingly common online. Migos hopes that tech like Intangible can amplify creativity, one of the many intangible human qualities that AI will never be able to replace -- hence the company's name.
"[Creators] are master storytellers," Migos said. "They understand how the audience thinks, and they understand the truth and beauty of the art forms. Those are the people that we want to empower."
