FBRC.ai Common Thread Q1 2024

Weaving Artistry with Intelligence

AuthorAuthor

Todd Terrazas & Rachel Joy Victor
January 29, 2024

Hello there, and welcome to the Common Thread Newsletter by FBRC.AI. You probably know us through our work in the AI LA Community.

This newsletter will keep you updated on the latest in advancing AI-driven creativity. We are a team of industry veterans, entrepreneurs, creatives, and technologists building the future of story creation.

We have a new website, so please check it out and reply back with any feedback or inquiries! 💫

Quick Hits

Rachel’s January AI Thoughts

Rachel, Todd, and Eric

As long as we’re still in January, I think I can still say Happy New Year! With the new year comes new areas of direction for the AI hype cycle to pivot to. This year, the focus is going to shift to AI on the Edge: AI being run on local hardware. While tech companies have been talking about (and building in this space) for years, this year is going to bring a AI on the Edge to consumer awareness. (See: Rabbit, Open AI getting into chip manufacturing, and Humane AI’s pin release). Of course, the branding around AI on the Edge won’t succeed if that’s how it’s talked about to consumers.

Fundamentally, AI becomes exciting for consumers not by being a technology, but by facilitating a certain type of behavior.

In the vein of the metaverse hype cycle—consumers don’t care about the metaverse, but sometimes they care about spending time in a virtual world catching up with their buddies while escaping a virtual sentient storm. The branding of the hype cycle has to not center around the innovation, but rather around the behavior it enables.

ChatGPT had the impact it had not solely because of the advancements in LLM technology reaching a tipping point but because it was wrapped in a package that could facilitate behaviors that made people’s day-to-day lives easier.

While a lot of the hardware we’ll see being built around AI will be rushed and poorly thought-out, there is the chance for breakthrough products in the space. That is, if it is designed with a true understanding of how AI is facilitating new forms of interaction with technology—and an exploration of the form factors that best support those new behaviors.

Startups

Startup presentations at the Living Lab

Our startup cohort is core to FBRC.ai’s focus on building tools for the workflows of the future. When selecting our startups, we put a lot of emphasis on the way that the tools could hand off to each other, with a focus on our thesis around realtime procedural 3D worlds at the center of future content creation. We identified five key startups supporting this future and vetted them for AI innovation, tool interoperability, and product-pipeline fit. We support our startups in finding product-pipeline fit through: product and systems design, market positioning and business model, partnerships and investor relationships, GTM strategy, and more.

We’ll be highlighting our startups here in the months to come, but for a sneak peek, here are the areas they’re focused on:

  • Procedural Asset Creation, Optimization, and Management

  • World, Character, and Narrative Architecture Scripting + Management

  • Transmedia Distribution Tool for Interactive Experiences

  • Multi-platform Collaborative Game Engine

  • Spatial Pre-Visualization and AI-supported Storyboarding

Bootcamps and Educational Sessions

We’re excited to launch a couple of bootcamps and education sessions designed to make AI education accessible in Los Angeles.

Our deep-dive generative video bootcamp goes a step beyond traditional online generative courses and gets participants running local versions of diffusion models with more authoring controls, and utilizing open source algorithms.

Our first iteration of this is as an intensive weekend bootcamp on March 9th and 10th instructed by Dr. Sam Khoze. We recommend this for creatives looking to upskill their workflow, or anyone curious about leveraging AI models beyond the most popular tools.

Coming up even sooner, on February 24th is our AI Executive Session, designed to give participants a nuanced grasp of the technical aspects of AI and its practical applications, equipping them with the knowledge to make informed decisions and spearhead AI integration and innovation in their organizations. Participants will leave with a deeper knowledge of AI and targeted strategies to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Living Lab Research

Jon Clinkenbeard and Fury

Our Living Lab in Playa Del Rey is a sandbox for academic research exploration and experimenting with emerging content workflows. We combine deep knowledge of AI models, emerging storytelling formats, and production methodologies to structure our research areas. Currently, the focus of some of our research projects includes:

Scenario Generation through World and Character Architectures

Exploring ways to generate novel but also logically consistent world events through designing character cognitive architecture, world progression, and state management systems. Specifically, we’re experimenting with how a blend of generative and procedural methods can facilitate the creation of compelling, scalable stories.

Hybrid Production-Ready Workflows

Researching hybrid generative model approaches to introduce stylistic consistency, entity recognition, and object constancy to the generative visual process.  Exploring how 2D generative models can merge with 3D workflows to introduce more creative control.

We’re creating white papers around some of our research, but we’ll also be iterating in the open and sharing our work as we go along. We’re also working with some of our partners to develop custom studies focused on client needs. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, contact us.

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