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XTikTok Launches Text-to-Image Generator AI Greenscreen
Steve Huff
Steve Huff is an Editor and Reporter at dot.LA. Steve was previously managing editor for The Metaverse Post and before that deputy digital editor for Maxim magazine. He has written for Inside Hook, Observer and New York Mag. Steve is the author of two official tie-ins books for AMC’s hit “Breaking Bad” prequel, “Better Call Saul.” He’s also a classically-trained tenor and has performed with opera companies and orchestras all over the Eastern U.S. He lives in the greater Boston metro area with his wife, educator Dr. Dana Huff.
If there wasn’t a feeding frenzy at the text-to-image, AI-powered trough after DALL-E 2 achieved viral fame, there will be now. TikTok has added an “AI greenscreen” feature in the app, which—like DALL-E 2—lets you put in a text prompt the AI then renders in image form. This adds another tool that creators can use as a video background.
It’s not a particularly sophisticated feature yet—it renders abstract, strange images like many text-to-image applications. Still, similar models like Imagen (Google) or Midjourney can render strikingly detailed creations by comparison.
The vague abstraction of AI Greenscreen images might be intentional, given the enormous amount of computing power needed to render the images on top of TikTok’s ever-increasing popularity as a social media app in general.
A series of surreal, colorful images created with TikTok's AI Greenscreen feature
As The Verge notes, the choice to make AI Greenscreen simple and surreal is a matter of corporate safety since TikTok has over a billion users. A photorealistic AI product could lead to someone producing objectionable, offensive and legally actionable content.
However limited the tool may be compared to established AI art projects, TikTok’s adoption of AI Greenscreen marks a significant step forward for text-to-art from something that’s still a tech novelty to more mainstream usage. In addition to notable projects like DALL-E 2 or the related app Craiyon (formerly DALL-E mini), there are numerous similar projects in the works, such as Bitcoin podcaster and Tokenly founder Adam B. Levine’s Pixelmind. Still in beta, it is described as “A generative art experiment” and produces notably interesting and precisely-rendered art that easily could have come from a human hand.
There’s also Playform.io, which offers AI-generated art as a tool for human artists, and Hotpot.ai, which provides a host of tools, including an AI artmaker.
The U.S. Copyright Office has already had to address the question of whether an artificial intelligence application can copyright an image it creates, and the answer was that “human authorship is a prerequisite to copyright protection.”
Still, visual artists are growing more concerned that artificial intelligence will drive them out of work. If TikTok adoption truly kickstarts text-to-image AI art into broader usage, paying for the computing power necessary to create it will be just one of a host of new problems confronting the emerging industry.
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Steve Huff
Steve Huff is an Editor and Reporter at dot.LA. Steve was previously managing editor for The Metaverse Post and before that deputy digital editor for Maxim magazine. He has written for Inside Hook, Observer and New York Mag. Steve is the author of two official tie-ins books for AMC’s hit “Breaking Bad” prequel, “Better Call Saul.” He’s also a classically-trained tenor and has performed with opera companies and orchestras all over the Eastern U.S. He lives in the greater Boston metro area with his wife, educator Dr. Dana Huff.
steve@dot.la
Ex-Zillow CEO Takes Offerpad Public in $3B Deal Pitting Him Against Former Colleagues
10:13 AM | March 18, 2021
GeekWire Photo/Kevin Lisota
Former Zillow Group CEO and dot.LA cofounder Spencer Rascoff is jumping back into the real estate game in a big way.
Rascoff, who left the CEO post at Zillow in February 2019, is part of a group of SPAC investors that's buying Offerpad, a 6-year-old real estate company that competes directly with Seattle-based company in a quest to transform how people buy and sell homes.
It's a deal that pits Rascoff against his former colleagues at Zillow, including co-founders Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink.
Rascoff's SPAC — operating under the name Supernova Partners Acquisition Company — is acquiring Offerpad in a deal that will value the Chandler, Ariz.-based company at $3 billion and bring in an additional $650 million in gross proceeds to a real estate technology provider that powers the quick selling and buying of homes. Offerpad plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol OPAD.
The SPAC deal is a volley fired by Rascoff across the bow of his former employer at Zillow, now valued at $35 billion.
Asked about the competition, Rascoff said in an email to GeekWire via a spokeswoman: "I'm still a Zillow shareholder, supporter and lifelong fan."
He added: "The real competition for Offerpad isn't Zillow or Opendoor, it's the fact that 99.5% of the time people sell their home the old analog way."
Rascoff doesn't have a non-compete agreement with Zillow, according to a spokesperson. Still, the competitive nature of the transaction could raise eyebrows on Wall Street and in the inner circles of the online real estate community.
Offerpad shareholders are expected to roll over 100% of their equity into the new entity, owning 75% of the combined company. Offerpad founder and CEO Brian Bair will own about 35% of the voting power of the combined company. He will remain CEO.
"Our team's combination of grit and real estate experience have helped us complete around 30,000 transactions and achieve nearly $7 billion in gross transaction volume since inception, and we are now poised for fast growth as a public company," Bair said in a statement. In a conference call Thursday morning, Bair said they operate more like a logistics company versus a real estate technology company.
The 500-person company, which operates in more than 900 cities, said it plans to do about $1.4 billion in revenue this year. It has raised $975 million to date in equity and debt capital.
As a comparison, Zillow Group in the fourth quarter of last year reported revenue of $789 million across its various platforms, with the company's "Homes" segment that includes online buying and selling of homes coming in at $304 million.
The online buying and selling of homes is becoming a more important part of Zillow's business, which first entered the market in 2018 in Phoenix and Las Vegas. In fact, at the time of the entry into the market — a diversion for Zillow, which until that time had positioned itself as an agnostic media company serving the real estate market — GeekWire's headline story noted: Zillow Group will start buying and selling homes, taking on Opendoor and expanding real estate footprint.
In a statement, Zillow said that the "increasing interest and investment in transforming real estate underscores the incredible demand for a more customer-centric, easier, tech-enabled transaction." It added that its 200 million monthly unique visitors puts the company in "a strong leadership position to usher home shoppers and sellers into the new era of real estate."
Rascoff last year launched a new real estate startup with his former Zillow Group colleagues called Pacaso, which aims to make it easier for more people to own a vacation home. At the time, Rascoff said he didn't view Pacaso as competitive with Zillow — Offerpad certainly is.
SPAC craze
Rascoff is involved in three SPACs, special purpose acquisition companies that are all the rage on Wall Street these days as an alternative to the traditional IPO process. All three of the SPACs are organized under the Supernova umbrella, an organization formed by Rascoff, Alexander Klabin, founder and CEO of Ancient; Robert Reid, an investor who formerly worked in Blackstone's Private Equity Group; and Michael Clifton, an investor who was most recently a senior investment professional at The Carlyle Group.
Rascoff shared more of his interest in SPACs in an interview with GeekWire last fall, noting that the traditional IPO process is broken in part due to the fact that many companies "leave money on the table" when shares soar after an offering.
In recent weeks, a number of industry watchers have pointed to a SPAC bubble. New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin said the SPAC phenomenon is a "sign of craziness," during an interview on The Prof G podcast. Meanwhile, Aaron Pressman at Fortune this week wrote: "These kind of things never end well. I fear the SPACpocalypse is near."
Even still, Rascoff is bullish on the latest SPAC deal between Supernova and Offerpad.
"iBuying has barely scratched the surface of real estate, one of the biggest addressable markets in the world, " Rascoff said in a statement. "…As they bring more transactions online, we believe online real estate as a whole is poised to grow rapidly in the coming years and that Offerpad is incredibly well-positioned to grab a huge piece of this market."
Offerpad also faces competition in the so-called iBuying arena from Seattle-based Redfin, which launched its RedfinNow unit in 2017 and now operates in parts of Arizona, California. Colorado, Texas and Washington state. Redfin projected that its property buying and selling unit would drive between $77 million and $80 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2021.
Additionally, San Francisco-based Opendoor went public last fall in a SPAC deal led by investor and SPAC king Chamath Palihapitiya, a deal that pumped $970 million into the business. Opendoor — which sold 18,799 homes in 2019 and 9,913 last year — is now valued at $16 billion.
According to an investor presentation this morning, Offerpad said it plans to sell 5,612 homes this year and 9,593 homes next year. It plans to operate in 19 markets this year, and move into about 50 markets in the next three years. It is also looking to boost its market share from less than 1% currently to about 4% — a significant jump that the company said would drive substantial revenue and profits. It estimates revenue of $3.9 billion by 2023, and gross profit of $353 million.
This story first appeared on GeekWire.
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NASA Starts Recruiting the Next Wave of Astronauts
02:31 PM | February 11, 2020
NASA says it'll take applications for its next class of astronauts between March 2 and 31 — the first step in what's expected to be a yearlong selection process.
To start the process, would-be spacefliers should click into USAJobs.com next month. For the first time in NASA history, applicants will be required to fill out a detailed online assessment that could take as long as two hours to complete.
The basic requirements, laid out in today's announcement, include U.S. citizenship and a minimum level of advanced STEM training or test-pilot experience. NASA expects to select the new class of astronaut candidates in mid-2021, which just about the time set for NASA's uncrewed Artemis 1 mission beyond the moon and back.
The next class of astronauts will be in on NASA's campaign to put astronauts on the moon by as early as 2024 in preparation for future trips to Mars. The last time NASA opened up an astronaut recruiting round, in late 2015, more than 18,300 people applied for what turned out to be a dozen spots.
This story originally appeared on GeekWire. Love space and science? Sign up for GeekWire's Space & Science email newsletter.
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Alan Boyle, GeekWire
GeekWire contributing editor Alan Boyle is an award-winning science writer and veteran space reporter. Formerly of NBCNews.com, he is the author of "The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference." Follow him via CosmicLog.com, on Twitter @b0yle, and on Facebook and MeWe.
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