World Labs, a startup co-founded by Stanford AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li earlier this year that has quickly caught the attention of high-profile investors, has been relatively quiet about its products—until now. Starting yesterday (December 3) gave a glimpse of your first project, which takes the form of virtual 3D scenes produced from a 2D image. “This will change the way we create movies, games, simulations and other digital representations of our physical world,” World Labs said in a blog post accompanying interactive examples of its 3D worlds. The preview shines a light on Li's major efforts to develop AI models that are “locally intelligent” and can understand and interact with the real world.
Based on photographs of landscapes, urban scenes and even works of art from artists like Vincent van Gogh and Edward Hopper, World Labs creates entire 3D worlds that users can explore—albeit with some limitations, such as a limit to how large the interactive space is. According to the first, this 3D content offers more control than traditional 2D AI content, as it allows users to adjust features such as depth of field or playback with camera zoom.
Often referred to as the “Goddess of AI” for her contributions to the field, Li in the 2000s played a major role in the release of ImageNet, a database of 15 million images that helped usher in significant advances in machine learning. He is currently on part-time leave from his role as director of Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered AI to work on World Labs, which Li founded earlier this year along with fellow AI researchers Justin Johnson, Ben Mildenhall and Christoph Lassner.
The AI investor roaster behind World Labs
The startup in September raised about $230 million in a round led by Radical Ventures, a Canadian firm where Li serves as a partner, in partnership with Andreessen Horowitz and NEA. Other World Lab investors include “AI god” Geoffrey Hinton, former Google ( GOOGL ) CEO Eric Schmidt, LinkedIn ( LNKD ) founder Reid Hoffman, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, scientist Google CEO Jeff Dean, actor-turned-investor Ashton Kutcher, and Nvidia's (NVDA) venture capital, NVentures.
World Labs' primary goal is to develop the ability to act intuitively within AI models—the kind of intelligence that took 540 million years to evolve in the human brain. “If we want to push AI beyond its current capabilities, we want more than AI that can see and talk. We want an AI that can do it,” Li said during a TED Talk in April.
This week's preview is a preview of what World Labs hopes to eventually accomplish. The company said it gave early access to its technology to digital content creators like Eric Solorio and Brittany Natali. “We're working hard to improve the size and reliability of our generated worlds, and we're experimenting with new ways for users to interact with them,” World Labs said.
