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Product teams often have tons of screen recordings and screenshots that end up unused . Video production using those screen door recordings has been time - consuming and expensive . That ’s why two former Microsoftemployees started to buildLica , which is an AI dick that easy creates tutorials and product videos out of screenshots and CRT screen recordings .
The startup was founded in 2023 by Priyaa Kalyanaraman , who has work on as a product manager at Microsoft , Snap , and Waymo , and Purvanshi Mehta , who worked at Microsoft as a data scientist and project manager .
Kalyanaraman — who make for on PowerPoint and Microsoft Designer , including on summate AI features to these products — say that she go steady a lot of demand from line of work users to tote up AI assistants to business creation .
“ I wanted to part something , give everyday multitude designing agents that help them communicate better . But I was on a visa , and it was challenging for me to start my own party . I build a small demonstration in a hackathon and put it on Twitter ( now X ) , where Replit ’s Amjad Masad saw it and expressed interestingness , ” Kalyanaraman said .
Mehta was also build projection of her own for content personalization . A mutual friend introduced them both , and they decided to build a tool for video storytelling because they felt tools were gaudy and ineffective .
Lica has raised $ 4 million in a seed round led by Accel , with participation from South Park Commons , Village Global , and angels like Replit CEO Amjad Masad , former a16z general mate Balaji Srinivasan , and Replit Chief Executive Michele Catasta .
Aditya Agarwal , a superintend partner at South Park Commons who has worked at companies like Dropbox and Meta , said traditionally , citizenry would build a compounding of document and slides to get their ideas across . On the other hand , video development was expensive and time - consuming . He consider Lica is plugging that gap .
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“ The huge absolute majority of the time , we would cover using a combination of written document and slides because these are artifacts that anybody can produce in an system . To produce videos , we went to different agencies depending on the requirement . We would n’t produce a picture for a lot of communicating internally or externally because it was n’t executable , ” Agarwal said .
The duo first started work on a manikin that gives you the ability to process any kind of multimodal input signal and forecast the chronological succession of activity and product - specific media according to that . However , the company decide to focus on TV first , targeting prosumers and squad like product , customer success , and sales .
The startup has a creature that help oneself you build a product video or an explainer out of a silver screen recording . Lica can mechanically add transitions , desktop music , and core . The company ’s redaction pecker gives you the freedom to total some parts , like text edition for narrative , manually . you’re able to also guide the AI assistant through prompts to give the picture a specific voice , such as “ Make a tutorial - styled telecasting in Gen Z language . ”
Once the video is generated , you’re able to also cut parts like voiceover tone , captions , language , trend , and music through prompts .
“ A lot of people do n’t have the vocabulary of what they require out of a telecasting . That leads to multiple time - consuming iterations until they get the terminal telecasting . We are giving you an AI supporter who acts like your video producer and works quickly , ” Kalyanaraman said .
The father noted that the instrument also sympathize aim aesthetics well . In instances where a exploiter inputs strange design or color alternative , the tool hit certain that the end product look pleasant and not off - putting .
Mehta name that an AI assistant has two sort of models : an orchestrator that puts together dissimilar component of the presentation , include choosing the best voice for the story , and a layout generator that fill forethought of how unlike parts of screen door recording or text appear on the sieve . The company uses a admixture of open source and close beginning poser for other constituent like audio generation .
Lica currently has a liberal tier that allows you to create 10 videos with a limit point of three minutes per television and three downloads per month . you could devote $ 49 a month to generate outright 10 - minute TV and get 10 downloads along with access to stigmatise guide .
While the current focus of the inauguration is on product and tutorial videos , in the upcoming months , Lica will look to tune up its AI assistant for more formats of videos , such as marketing , presentation , societal medium , and investor delivery .
Lica might not have lineal competitors , but companies and startups in general practice anything from a Zoom call to screen recording to make a rudimentary video recording , with a tool likeLoomto polish it up . AI - centrical startups like D - ID andSynthesiahave used avatars for tutorial videos or internal messaging .
Accel ’s Sameer Gandhi believes the startup has the right-hand mix of calibre of the team and its Cartesian product approach .
“ Lica differentiate itself by combining advanced AI capacity with intuitive designing in a single political platform , take into account users to maintain creative control while do good from AI - assisted capabilities . couple with the team ’s generative AI and product development ground , we believe they ’re unambiguously put to address a cardinal market motivation that other solution have yet to full enamor , ” he told TechCrunch over email .
