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- Meta has 'no concrete product plan' for generative video
Meta has 'no concrete product plan' for generative video
Release AI first, figure out later
Backlog
October 04, 2024
Still from a Movie Gen video / meta.com
Meta is launching their latest AI product: Movie Gen.
With Movie Gen, users can create short videos (16 seconds max) based on a text prompt.
Look, I don’t want to say I’m blasé about this but… kinda am. Sora was unveiled in Feb 2024 (longer videos but still in closed Beta). This doesn’t feel new, even though it’s insanely cool.
However, in the press, Connor Hayes said something that caught my eye:
[Movie Gen will be] fun to use, helpful for creators, good for overall engagement in the apps, but we don’t have a concrete product plan of what it will look like at this point.
Interesting.
I expect this hesitation comes from a good place. Video generation is notoriously extremely expensive. It’s also super-slow. The image/video generation industry is fighting deepfakes. Oh, and Meta also has, so far, focused on open sourcing their work.
There’s plenty of economics to figure out before this product can find its place in the Meta stack.
This seems to be a trend with AI products: build first, figure out later.
While there’s something to be said about being the first-mover (and the uncertainties laid out above), businesses will soon need to revert to a more ‘normal’ way of building products.