Mickey Friedman co-launched Aptitude.ai in 2022, a 12 months after graduating from the College of Chicago. The corporate, which has raised $5 million in seed funding, deploys synthetic intelligence to good product images, offering whole digital scenes and setups.
The method, Friedman says, remakes ecommerce images by dramatically decreasing the price of picture shoots whereas bettering high quality.
In our latest dialog, she addressed the rise of visible AI, the need of human intervention, and extra. The complete audio is embedded under. The transcript is edited for size and readability.
Eric Bandholz: Who the heck are you?
Mickey Friedman: I personal an organization referred to as Aptitude. We launched in 2023. We’re constructing an AI instrument for product images, visualizations, and animations. We’re attempting to streamline the picture shoot course of into an easy-to-use digital studio at a a lot decrease value.
We’re a group of 5. We’ve onboarded over one million customers now.
We begin with retailers’ current product images. We carry out colour corrections, protect the lettering, and supply a whole digital scene. Model and textual content preservation are essential to us.
I used to be early on within the AI artwork scene. I used to be fascinated about advertising and picture shoots, however I used to be extra drawn to the inventive course of, taking part in round with AI fashions to create artwork. The method within the early days was taking a little bit of textual content and producing pictures. There’s nonetheless a spot for that, akin to Midjourney. However ecommerce firms wish to protect their manufacturers and belongings and management the visible association of their scenes.
Bandholz: How are retailers utilizing your instrument to this point?
Friedman: Photos for touchdown pages and natural social posts are very talked-about. We’re attempting to outline the inventive means of a photograph shoot. Many AI instruments take away people from that course of, however we would like the other, the place our prospects execute no matter imaginative and prescient they’ve.
People who gravitate to Aptitude are sometimes on the intersection of ecommerce and creativity — an in-house design group or an company. They perceive our platform intuitively.
There’s a whole lot of storyboarding on Aptitude. We’ve had prospects with a imaginative and prescient of a dream picture shoot they’ll’t execute due to in depth coordination and price. Utilizing Aptitude, they add the uncooked product images to the canvas, discover the props they want, and roughly replicate their picture shoot on the platform.
Bandholz: Aptitude appears poised to scale.
Friedman: It’s a very massive market. We would like each model on the planet to make use of us in some capability. Smaller manufacturers with funds constraints might transition picture shoots, whereas bigger manufacturers that may afford picture shoots want higher instruments.
Regardless, so long as companies require picture shoots, Aptitude will hopefully be concerned of their workflow. That’s our purpose.
We’re branching out into verticals. For style manufacturers, we are able to place a sweater on a digital human mannequin, for instance. For product commercials, we cut back the fee.
We would like as a lot traction as potential with smaller manufacturers. However we are going to probably transfer upmarket a bit, though we’ll by no means be too costly — approach lower than $500 a month.
Over time, our AI fashions will enhance, thus bettering picture high quality. Finally, we are going to create banner advertisements. Every part can be AI-generated. My solely hope is that people are on the middle of that course of. They direct it as a substitute of a black field algorithm.
Bandholz: The place can individuals join Aptitude and comply with you?
Friedman: The platform is Aptitude.ai. You’ll be able to add me on LinkedIn or comply with me on X, @mickeyxfriedman.
