Mickey Friedman co-launched Aptitude.ai in 2022, a yr after graduating from the College of Chicago. The corporate, which has raised $5 million in seed funding, deploys synthetic intelligence to excellent product pictures, offering total digital scenes and setups.
The method, she says, remakes ecommerce images by dramatically decreasing the price of photograph shoots whereas bettering high quality.
In our latest dialog, she addressed the rise of visible AI, the need of human intervention, and extra. Your 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 known as Aptitude. We launched in 2023. We’re constructing an AI device for product pictures, visualizations, and animations. We’re making an attempt to streamline the photograph shoot course of into an easy-to-use digital studio at a a lot decrease price.
We’re a staff of 5. We’ve onboarded over 1,000,000 customers now.
We begin with retailers’ current product pictures. We carry out colour corrections, protect the lettering, and supply a complete digital scene. Model and textual content preservation are necessary to us.
I used to be early on within the AI artwork scene. I used to be fascinated about advertising and photograph shoots, however I used to be extra drawn to the inventive course of, enjoying round with AI fashions to create artwork. The method within the early days was taking a little bit of textual content and producing photos. There’s nonetheless a spot for that, reminiscent of 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 device so far?
Friedman: Photos for touchdown pages and natural social posts are very talked-about. We’re making an attempt to outline the inventive technique of a photograph shoot. Many AI instruments take away people from that course of, however we wish the alternative, the place our prospects execute no matter imaginative and prescient they’ve.
Of us who gravitate to Aptitude are sometimes on the intersection of ecommerce and creativity — an in-house design staff or an company. They perceive our platform intuitively.
There’s quite a lot of storyboarding on Aptitude. We’ve had prospects with a imaginative and prescient of a dream photograph shoot they will’t execute due to in depth coordination and price. Utilizing Aptitude, they add the uncooked product pictures to the canvas, discover the props they want, and roughly replicate their photograph shoot on the platform.
Bandholz: Aptitude appears poised to scale.
Friedman: It’s a very giant market. We wish each model on the planet to make use of us in some capability. Smaller manufacturers with price range constraints might transition photograph shoots, whereas bigger manufacturers that may afford photograph shoots want higher instruments.
Regardless, so long as companies require photograph shoots, Aptitude will hopefully be concerned of their workflow. That’s our aim.
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 associated fee.
We wish as a lot traction as potential with smaller manufacturers. However we’ll probably transfer upmarket a bit, though we’ll by no means be too costly — means lower than $500 a month.
Over time, our AI fashions will enhance, thus bettering picture high quality. Finally, we’ll create banner advertisements. Every little thing 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 folks 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.
