 Full house this is exciting Okay, so thank you everyone for being here. We're excited to chat about AI and sort of how it's going to impact How people do things in the future. I'm really excited to be here with Havana's CEO and co-founder of pics art welcome Hello Hello everyone so To get us started. Can you give us a little bit of an introduction of pics art? I know it's a hugely hugely popular app, but not everyone might know about it Okay, before I start maybe I can have a like a quick survey. How many of you know pics art? Okay, all right large group. So so let me explain for those people who don't know so pics art is wildly popular up installed over 1.2 billion times and Used by over hundred and fifty million users every month So every month we are creating about one billion edits on our platform So one billion times we are creating a content on our platform and it's used everywhere We have like every country in the world on our platform and It's very in a powerful all-in-one photo video and design tool Created for everyone to use and create an amazing content Also for the sake of today's discussion. I am also former AI scientist I was doing AI back in 90s when one AI was not cool so I was very early in AI and Yeah, I'm very excited about the whole progress. We are doing that now with AI so so I'd love to hear a little bit About pics art's journey into having AI integrated in it because I remember in 2014 when I wrote about the app It was all about the community features I'm sharing with people and now it's a lot more about AI. So what's the journey? Yeah, I'm taking for asking Canada We've been in there You you we talk when it was a 2014 2015 and yes We were building the community and tools but Because of my former AI things I was very much watching the AI progress and actually will launch our first AI feature Back in 2017 when I was pitching to my board saying, okay, we are going to be a first company 2017 and they think I'm crazy So the tool first tool was like a AI filters if you remember if you remember Prisma You know, they are like first way a second to launch this AI tool Which allowed to take an image and create a like a styled version of it using AI So that was first Features and since that we introduced a lot of other features like a new background upscaling different filters etc. So make your image more like cartoonish etc and One year ago exactly around this time at Web Summit We also introduce our one of the first text to image tools which allow to create, you know, like everybody knows that When we introduced that we were like one of them Maybe we were like a one of the complex which do that kind of things and now like everybody's talking about the AI So it's interesting. I just counted like in every talk There's like at least if you didn't say AI like 10 times within 10 minutes. You probably not really important So that's kind of things. So yeah, that was a very much like a history of like building AI features Because I see this as such an important tool to empower creators on our platform So a lot of people use Pixar for fun to create or edit images maybe further social media or like whatever else they're doing But also a lot of people are using it for business purposes Yeah, did you always know that it was going to be really popular for business purposes? Or is that something that kind of organically came up at some point? Okay, just to tell the story about why we created Pixar I why I created Pixar I created Pixar because of my daughter I want to empower her. She was 10 years old when I started. I want to empower her I want to create a tool which she can use to create something amazing and be in a very positive environment with similar people But I also see like her like growing and using this tool more and more. I see like this Generation are very Interprenerial, so when I was a kid, you know, I was thinking look like how I can find a good job a highly-paid job Etc. Teenagers today thinking how they will start a company how they will start a business So that's kind of very entrepreneurial kind of a generation and I see my mission is to empower this generation and not only to create but also create for purpose So I will see a lot of keys is when you know He start because of the farm. It's interesting. It's cool. You create some memes you create You know some you know entertaining things you put on our social media to create a reality but we also creating a journey from farm to like a Purpose like a business It could be like a very tiny business like selling t-shirts on itsy store or eBay But it's something which is kind of like a you know good for a site hustling etc. So to You know fun. We're actually helping Teenagers to became more more creative more more professional actually build something very useful So yesterday we did another panel and you said something that was very interesting to me Which is that when initially pics art was rolling out its AI features you guys Anticipated that users were just going to immediately embrace them be very excited and use the features and that's not what happened Tell us a little bit about that right so we have a large user base They already kind of used the existing tools. They use kind of like existing kind of features, etc so when we introduce AI actually we introduce very early and We thought, you know, that would be easy, you know immediate heat on our platform But it took a while. I mean if we see now we think exponential growth, but we didn't understand There's a certainly an inertia There's a certain log between like when you introduce very cool feature and when people understand the value of it So you need to really like keep educating about the value. You should show the examples. They should Collaborate they should share the knowledge and ultimately it became like a such an important tool, right? Oh, we already generated 1 billion images using yeah, you're not a platform So I'm taking billions all the time. Sorry about that, but you know, that's true We are such a massive platform that We're really like kind of like feeling the all the trends on our platform and we seeing like the you know People are start using tools more and more One interesting fact that 70% of people are using our Tools they actually end up editing it So they're not like a making like final content and such posting in our social network They're starting with AI, but then continue editing. I think you know their own personality their own Kind of aesthetics like applying filters cropping I think another image making a collage Removing the background adding their background using our replace tool So you replace this object with that object. So this is a very very powerful process. It's and And it's very much fits our mission We want our AI to be a co-pilot in the creativity So unlock their creativity even more because now they can do much more with much less previous experience Did you was that surprising that you anticipate that people would use AI to do the editing after the initial product? Yeah, it's a kind of like very unique to pick something. You know if people using me journey They just using in creating and sharing What we see is you know our users are really wants to be creative They should you know have your own their own personality and Express themselves in the through the through the creations. So that's you know I Think it's not surprising I would expect but we are pleasantly you know get this confirmation that our users are really creatives and they really love to create their own their own Images and videos etc. So what are all these trends that you've observed in your user base? What does that tell us about the future of visual creativity? so Lots of discussions right and you know we talk about like is it going to take our jobs is it like yeah It sees I mean it's a very very powerful technology. I am comparing it with electricity So when you get a lot of electricity, it's going to empower lots of new machines new processes new tools So yeah, and then Some people are going to use this opportunity and some people are going to really use the old school kind of things And I'm not talking only designers Engineers like a software engineers in particularly. I am also like you know software engineer by background So I see like a tremendous impact on the software productivity and Again, like we need to explain Everybody that yeah, you need to start learning this new way of doing if you didn't learn today How to use this technology you're going to miss out tomorrow because that's where you became less and less competitive Because people which learn they will be much more productive and then you are going to be you know losing the competition to these people not to AI So my message to you Look at AI as a co-pilot as an assistant not as a competition It's a it's a the I think it's a pretty stupid to fight with the technology if it's exist It's better to embrace this technology and use to your benefit Do you think that it's going to take the jobs of illustrators graphic designers? You know, I mean I you know I am a little biased because my daughter is she's an artist too And I really want her to keep her like a passion and being artist etc So my take is you know, we need to make sure that we are not killing this You know a real artist jobs and that's why for example We're actually encouraging not to use living artist name in our prompts So when we say okay, you know our attempts to say we're going to move even further with that So actually trying to be more restrictive to use living artist names etc in prompts So yes That's why my purpose. I see it's not like a create an art But more more pragmatic. So how we can help businesses. How can your startups can use our product? So I believe we have some many startup founders here in this room So the I see them as our users. I see they're marketing people to use our product I see solo printers to use our product not necessarily like new Generation of pica sauce because I really think they should really go and use like a you know a traditional You know kind of techniques to to draw even if they can use a I to for inspiration and ideation things So I'm trying to separate these two things, you know, so art I will leave to artists Even if we just provide some additional inspiration and tools or whatever I am really focusing on a practical implications of creativity for For purpose for for business for productivity for better design for better marketing for better Presentation so this is like world what she's we know keep me Excited about Pixar you mentioned, you know living artists and prompts Bigger picture. What is your opinion on the whole? Question around whether large language models should be used it should be trained on other artists work Is that fair? Should they be compensated? Is it fair use? Yeah, so there are lots of aspects of a ethical use of AI and And so my key and I and there's a lot of problems we need we need to understand I think the way we should think about ethical use We should you know, you know, we should talk less about technology itself We should we should start talking about applications. I think the unethical use of AI Not because of the technology is ethical or not Unethical it's like electricity. It cannot be ethical or unethical. It's just a technology But we use it electricity to make a harm. That's unethical use for for the technology So the same he thinks here. I think what we should really focus of you know, who is using this technology and for what? It's already there. We cannot undo it. We cannot uninvent it. So And it's already like trained whatever. So now we should really look at that. What what, you know Can we control the prompt? Can we just you know, make sure people don't use the you know Brand names or living artist names in the prompt what we're generating should can we check for safety of the generated? Stuff can we you know make sure that you're not creating something which is you know damaging other people or so you're stealing Money with this or making another crime. So I think that's what we should be more and more focused about You know the the technology is so such a powerful things It has a bright side as a dark side like every technology like internet like computers every technology So we should focus okay the dark use of this technology and say okay We should kind of are the more and more regulations about How you should not use this technology? Okay, and that will be very good for a complex like us So we know clearly guide like you know understanding that we can use here and it will be allowed and it's a God, you know, it's a it's beneficial to a humanity to use that way Interesting and so how has that impacted the way you guys are building out your AI features? Are you being more selective on the models that you're introducing and partnering with give us a water? Thank you such a great speaker full service. Yes It's a funny story. I just you know, I think you know what like let's take electricity, right? We know that when you produce electricity you are burning charcoal or whatever You know you're damaging your environment, but we know this is a problem and actually we are moving to clean energy So we're setting a roadmap to move to the clean energy to use it You know like a way to produce electricity. So here as well. I think we are Gradually moving to cleaner and cleaner data sets and ultimately I think we are going to have a much clean data sets Which will be like completely, you know Free from these old copyright materials, etc I don't think companies doing this willingly it just that they have like six billion images or seven billion images to train It's very hard to really like pick the copyright content and remove it from this training set They will be happy to do that. By the way, some of these companies So it's a kind of a process we now have a like roadmap to move to the clean Datasets to remove all these elements and using more and more synthetic content for a training So basically yes after some period of time, we are going to see much cleaner data sets much more powerful It's in a much more opportunities to create not an art. Actually. Yes. That's what I I Have a very much in mind. It's our model mighty artists the models We are creating are not really like art focused. We are really focusing on a stock images creation Creation images for advertisement creating images for you know, like a poster creating images Which is completely different kind of game Let's do a little bit of audience participation raise your hand if you're building with AI and your startup Where's been a I with I would say you know fully should say now who's not Obviously AI is new but also becoming very quickly commoditized There's like a lot of platforms and startups are using their API is introducing a lot of the same features How are you thinking about differentiating yourselves in your category? so it's a We are differentiating ourselves not because of technology, but because of the user experience So we are trying to create you know such a powerful user experience So people really like have a you know friction less flow for creation And if you can make it a less friction the better for the user So that means you know, we are introducing AI tools. We're learning to our data We are learning how the users are you know using our product because we have such a big user base So it's all for us. It's easier to to test our different hypothesis very quickly So we are you know providing you know like powerful tools. We are testing them when we are removing frictions as we go Yeah, we have other differentiators. We have a you know, we have a community which you know contributing back to the big side we have a very strong AI team actually we have We built AI team for many many many years. It's pretty large AI team. We bought GPUs last year We have you know both pretty large cluster of GPUs and so we are training our own models So we are having our own models which are very fine tune to our use case Yeah, we understand, you know, you cannot compete with every model in the world But you can make a model which is more fine tuned to your Particular use case and that's we see as a differentiator as a flywheel for us to you know empower more of our users And it's something better faster and cheaper So relatedly, how are you thinking about? Product market fit or for features for example, how are you kind of getting then the signal out of the noise from your users Good question So Multiple sources, right, you know, so we have founders here. So do you understand? We are you know, we are looking at the existing user behavior, but it's always an indicator what they want, right? So, you know They will want some incremental improvements, but they will not really like ask for radical improvements So we need to really look at the competitors really look at all the new technologies where are which appearing They have our own way of, you know, innovating like hackathons and all these engineers coming with new ideas We know our they were about 800 people of Pixar and everybody almost everybody is using Pixar They are contributing back with ideas, etc So, you know, we are collecting ideas from many places and then what we do with these ideas We rapidly test them we rapidly test and You know in do a bit testing so seeing this feature that feature and see which feature was really Resonates and if they don't resonate we just replace fit another feature. So rapid iteration rapid testing rapid Experimentation that was a kind of both in our DNA for many many years. That's how we started when we started We were launching a new version every week Because it's the horizon stage founders in the audience. What is your Advice your top advice for other entrepreneurs who are waiting into AI right, so, okay, so Dear founders and their printers. Yeah, I think take a very seriously That's what we never will be I'll say but also Find out your own way of using it. There are two ways of using the AI today one is To improve your internal productivity, which is a huge huge tool for in your hand so you can improve like an engineering process design process graphics and Marketing so it could really automate lots of things for you It could make you your life so much easier But also think about the value you can provide to your end users to your to AI I believe everybody's using AI today and AI will be like internet So we call it ourselves sometimes it's I am AI company. I am a company, but it would be like internet. Nobody called Very company anymore like I'm internet company because every company's internet company So the same thing if the AI every company will be a company ultimately Because you are going to use AI you are going to use the same we use computers the same way you use Electricity the same way use the internet you are going to use AI So the sooner the better I would say the more quicker you Embrace this technology the better Though yeah, then I think it's an amazing time. It's an amazing time. It's also a scary time I honestly I think it's a it's a it has a some existential threat to many companies in Here or in the near future But it's also an opportunity so you know the longer you wait There will be more than existential trend and if you move sooner, it could be an opportunity Any best practices should they be looking to open source first or how should they tackle that practically? I think that's you know if you like for me like for if you really like Leading age like right now GPT for is the top product product no question So you can use open source, but GPT for still by far the best But for other things you can use open source things Yeah, if you're using like coding, I still didn't see anything better than GPT for now I hope there will be more competition. I hope looking forward to for that And I think that would be a great thing. So you can consider also Training your own fine-tune models based on open source models If you have a large data sets, that's will be your advantage to train your and fine-tune data sets using the Open source and your data sets that could be like very good competitive advantage But yeah open source is a big thing I think it's really like making so much accessible to entrepreneurs to start up or to use this open source for free almost for free and Launch products based on them All right, let's do a couple of fun questions for the ending What is your favorite way of using AI right now? Is there an app that you love using every day other than Pixar? It will be a laughing but you know, I'm spending my last weekends coding. I was doing my coding like okay 10 years ago my last one and now I just became like again a fan of coding because so much fun It's a I feel like I can really like make a prototype like any minutes and basically then I show to my Product or engineering not just a document but actually even working prototype which is a kind of very cool of way of communicating and Yeah, I really enjoyed doing that It's it's become my work much easier when you can show things working and it's okay. Take it and continue Versus just writing a document Which people still didn't understand how things work And then finally give me an AI prediction for 2024. I Think the big things for next year will be video I think video is kind of like, you know, we are seeing first first results But I think next year will be big boom of video production using AI Which it could be very disruptive to the many industries Including, you know, like Hollywood and video production in general I think video will be a very big thing so but also multi modality So intersection of different kind of formats Into one kind of you know product and tools Something to watch. Well, I think this is a great place to end. Thank you so much for being here Thank you guys for being here with us Thank you very much. Good luck