Easel is a new startup that sits at the intersection of generative AI and social trends, founded by two former Snap employees. The company is working on an app that lets you create images of yourself and your friends doing cool things directly from your favorite iMessage conversations.
There’s a reason I mentioned that the co-founders worked at Snap before founding Easel. While Snap may never reach the scale of Instagram or TikTok, it’s arguably the most innovative social enterprise since social apps began taking over smartphone home screens. .
Before Apple made augmented reality and virtual reality cool again, Snap paved the way for augmented reality with lenses. Even if you’ve never really used Snapchat, chances are you’ve played with it wacky lenses on your phone or using someone else’s phone. This feature had a massive cultural impact.
Likewise, before Meta tried to make virtual avatars cool again with massive investments in Horizon Worlds and the company’s Reality Labs division, Snap made a curious move by acquiring Bitmoji back in 2016. At the time, people thought that the ability to create a virtual avatar and use it to communicate with friends was just a fad. Now, with Memojis in iMessage and FaceTime, and Meta Avatars also appearing in Meta apps, virtual avatars have become a fun and innovative way to express yourself.
“I was at Snap for five years. Before that, I was at Stanford. I moved to Los Angeles to join Snap on Bobby Murphy’s research team, where we kind of worked on a range of futuristic things,” co-founder and CEO of Easel. Rajan Vaish told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. He co-founded Easel with Sven Kratzwho was a senior research engineer at Snap.
But this team was disbanded in 2022 as part of Snap’s various waves of layoffs. The duo took the opportunity to bounce back and continue to innovate – but outside of Snap.
AI as a vector of personal communication
Easel uses generative AI to allow users to create Bitmoji-style stickers depicting themselves drinking coffee, relaxing at the beach, riding a bike – whatever you want, as long as it can be described and generated by an AI model.
When you start using Easel, you capture a few seconds of your face so the company can create a personal AI model and use it to generate stickers. Easel currently uses Stable broadcastthe technology to create images. The fact that you can generate images with your own face is both a little strange but also much more attractive than an average AI-generated image.
“Once you submit your photos, we begin training on our servers. And then we create an AI avatar model for you. Now we know what your face looks like, what your hair looks like, etc. » said Vaish.
But Easel is not just an image generation product. It’s a multiplayer experience that lives in your conversations. The startup chose to integrate Easel into the native iOS Messages app so you don’t have to switch to a new…
