🚨 New @a16z thesis: AI x commerce

AI will change the way we shop - from where we find products to how we evaluate them, when we buy, and much more.

What types of purchases will be disrupted, and where does opportunity exist in the age of AI?

More from me + @arampell 👇 To start - what are the categories of commerce? (for consumers)

We divide them by level of consideration, from impulse buys to life purchases.

These have vastly different processes - you don't buy a new backpack and a car in the same way - which means the way AI touches each purchase category will vary.

Spent a few days testing out Imagine - @grok's new image and video generator.

And I've got a good sense of where it spikes, what the limitations are, and how to use it.

Curious about how it stacks up? Keep reading 👇 @grok First: all video generation on Grok starts from an image.

You can either upload a photo from your camera roll, or generate one in the app.

Image generation is INSANELY fast. It literally makes new images as you scroll. As you can see, the slowest part is my typing 😅

What's blowing up in AI video this week?

I curated the most viral & interesting formats across platforms - and recreated them to share workflows.

The list and how to make them 👇 1) Nighttime home video footage

Two types of this video are going viral on Reels and TikTok:

a) Cats bringing home or interacting with an unexpected friend (this one from wowcsly has 120M views 🤯)

b) Animal visitors jumping on a trampoline (unfortunate ending for this bear)

I reverse-engineered the viral "AI zoom" workflow for any animal and scene.

(and no, they don't all have to be flipping you off)

How to do it 👇

https://twitter.com/venturetwins/status/1947517167613906949

Start with the central image that you want the camera to pause on after zooming in.

If you're going to do the middle finger, you might have to generate a normal image + ask 4o to edit it.

You can also use in your own pet! To place them in a cool scene, use Flux Kontext. E.g. I uploaded Finn and asked for him to be on the streets of Tokyo.

You can now make AI video that's "filmed" in a real location 🤯

Like this Stormtrooper's fundraising vlog that tours @a16z's SF office - and looks just like the real thing!

It's easy to put AI characters in your own office, home, or vacation spot. How to do it 👇 This uses Veo 3 image-to-video.

Easy way: upload a frame of your location. Prompt the character(s) you want to add, the direction of their movement, and what you want them to do or say.

My prompt for this: "stormtrooper youtuber walks from the right into the frame past the chairs. he then pauses, turns back to the camera, and whispers 'It's time!' "

(I cropped the beginning for time reasons)

🚨 How to make longer videos with Veo 3:

I've spent hours experimenting with the new image-to-video mode.

And I've found a way to generate consistent + cohesive stories that are much longer than the 8 second limit.

Tutorial and tips to make it work 👇 To begin: Veo 3 can still only generate 8 seconds at a time.

But you can essentially "extend" this by taking the end frame from one clip and using it as the start frame for your next clip.

This sounds easy, but it's pretty finicky. My learnings so you don't waste credits ⬇️

Wild things are happening on Meta’s AI app.

The feed is almost entirely boomers who seem to have no idea their conversations with the chatbot are posted publicly.

They get pretty personal (see second pic, which I anonymized).
I spent an hour browsing the app, and saw:
-Medical and tax records
-Private details on court cases
-Draft apology letters for crimes
-Home addresses
-Confessions of affairs
…and much more!

Not going to post any of those - but here’s my favorite so far

Introducing Melt: a new froyo experience brought to you by AI 🍦

Fun experiment to make a brand from scratch - from ideating to designing the logo and generating product photos.

The workflow on this one was ChatGPT -> Ideogram -> Krea (Flux).
@ideogram_ai @krea_ai @bfl_ml I started by going to ChatGPT to ideate on the idea - a new frozen yogurt chain that was cool and modern.

I asked for some ideas for name and brand identity.

We went back and forth until we landed on the right name, colors, and a prompt for the initial photo.

AI baby videos are taking over the Internet.

Infant podcasters, politicians, and CEOs - like baby Elon discussing the national debt - are racking up millions of views.

And they're easy to make. Tutorial 👇 To start, you'll need a photo of your chosen baby.

I tested a bunch of image models to make this and landed on @ideogram_ai v3, hosted on @krea_ai.

My prompt:
"photorealistic elon musk as a baby in a tesla t-shirt sitting in front of a podcast mic, elon musk face"

People are using ChatGPT to turn their pets into humans - and the results are very entertaining
For some reason I can’t stop laughing at this one

🚨 New @a16z thesis: AI avatars

Generative models are finally good enough to make talking characters with AI.

Combining a voice with a face has unlocked countless use cases - from sales reps for enterprises to consumer animation.

Our market map + insights 👇 @a16z I tested 20+ products to make AI characters.

In case you haven't tried them yourself, I've included some of the outputs below (from @hedra_labs, @getcaptionsapp, and @arcads_ai)

As someone who has been trialing these tools for years, I'm blown away by what we can now create.

People are taking pictures from r/AccidentalRenaissance and turning them into actual Renaissance paintings

🚨 New @a16z thesis: building websites / apps with AI

There's been an explosion of products that help users "vibe code" a web app from text prompts.

We dove deep on these tools - who's using them, how they work, and where they might be headed.

Our market map + insights 👇 @a16z @stuffyokodraws @Mascobot @GEVS94 @kirbyman01 1/ To start: why is there so much buzz?

Thousands of users - from consumers to experienced developers - are sharing what they've made with these tools.

The growth is impressive: @boltdotnew reportedly grew to $20M ARR and @lovable_dev to $10M in 2 months of monetization.

I think I've uncovered the next Turing test for AI video: writing.

I've tried this prompt dozens of times on every model: "man writes 'hi' in chalk on blackboard"

None can do it. Veo 2 (below) gets the closest. It's actually frustrating to watch! The Sora attempts are quite funny because the characters often look like they're having some kind of existential crisis about their inability to write.

These guys are both going through something...

ChatGPT refuses to say the name “David Mayer,” and no one knows why.

If you try to get it to write the name, the chat immediately ends.

People have attempted all sorts of things - ciphers, riddles, tricks - and nothing works.
One of my favorite attempts is someone changing their own personalization settings to make their name “David Mayer”

Still doesn’t work!

🚨 New @a16z investment thesis: AI x parenting

Raising kids is one of our most challenging and important jobs.

Every parent needs support sometimes - but many can't access it because it's too inexpensive or inaccessible.

AI changes this. What we're seeing 👇 To start: there's lots of help for hire.

Fertility specialists, lactation & sleep consultants, night nurses, nannies, assistants - the list goes on.

But most families can't afford human help. They rely on forums, blogs, and friends...and they're often left burnt out and frustrated.

🚨 New @a16z thesis: building the "AI brain"

We all exist in our own context.

Is it possible to take your jumble of thoughts, history, and memories and distill it into something tangible?

How I exported my brain to AI + what I'm seeing from startups 👇 I spent the last six months talking to ChatGPT daily - spilling thoughts, feelings, and even screenshots.

The goal? To create an "AI brain" that truly understood me.

I was blown away by the results...and found it valuable for much more than I expected. A few use cases:

New tutorial: running multiple Flux LoRAs at once.

This is useful if you want to put multiple people in an image OR combine a person with a style.

These were made using my LoRA + a style LoRA on @replicate, instructions 👇





1/ To start - you need LoRAs to combine!

To train one that makes images of you, follow this thread + link to the trainer.

TL;DR - you'll upload ~15 photos of yourself and can ignore most of the other settings.

Make sure to save your "trigger word."

https://x.com/appenz/status/1824490947612422150

It just got 10x easier to create character-consistent animations with ToonCrafter.

This took <5 minutes to make with Flux from @bfl_ml, @heyglif, @replicate, and @krea_ai.

All available in your browser. The workflow 👇 @bfl_ml @heyglif @replicate @krea_ai As a reminder - ToonCrafter interpolates between images to create a video.

You need multiple frames of the same character, which are hard to get!

Flux (released last week) is very good at this - and @heyglif is hosting an app for easy prompting.

glif.app/glifs/clzgufej…

🚨 New market map alert!

Our team @a16z consumer dove into the first killer use case of AI: making creative content.

A recap of the companies tackling generation and editing + what we're hoping to see next 👇 We'll start with generation.

Millions have used Midjourney and DALL-E (image), Runway and Pika (video), and ElevenLabs (voice).

Typing a prompt and getting content feels like magic - it's no surprise these products have so quickly gone mainstream.

https://twitter.com/venturetwins/status/1746332433648431429

Someone made an AI murder mystery 🕵️‍♀️

You upscale the crime scene photo to find clues, uncover the murderer, and infer the motive. The first set of clues: