Otto Williams
Sep 2, 2024
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Video-01 is the first iteration of the firm’s Sora-like tool, with future updates expected to enable users to generate videos from images. Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up MiniMax has launched Video-01, its new text-to-video-generating model, heating up competition with other mainland tech firms eager to catch up with the advances made by OpenAI’s Sora.
MiniMax – recognized as one of China’s AI “tigers” along with Zhipu AI, Baichuan, and Moonshot AI – made Video-01 available to the public via its website following its unveiling at the company’s first developer conference in Shanghai on Saturday.
Video-01 allows users to input a text description to create a video lasting up to six seconds. The process, from text prompt to video generation, takes about two minutes. Yan Junjie, founder and CEO of MiniMax, mentioned at the event that Video-01 is just the beginning of the firm’s video-generating tool capabilities. Future updates will enable users to generate videos from images and to edit these videos, according to local media reports.
Video-01 from MiniMax illustrates the aggressive moves Chinese tech firms have been making in this emerging AI market segment, several months after OpenAI first introduced samples of videos created by Sora in February, which sparked concerns about China’s ability to keep pace with U.S. advancements. Notably, Sora has not yet been released to the public.
Founded in December 2021, MiniMax offers its new text-to-video-generating tool as part of its consumer-facing Hailuo AI platform, which also provides AI text and music-generating features.
Beijing-based start-up Shengshu AI launched its text-to-video tool, Vidu, in July, which supports both Chinese and English text prompts. Similarly, Zhipu AI, a start-up valued at more than US$1 billion, introduced its own Sora-like tool that month, which accepts both text and image prompts.
ByteDance, the owner of TikTok and Douyin, made its new Jimeng text-to-video app available for download on Apple’s mainland App Store last month, following its July release on various local Android app stores. The desktop version debuted in May. Jimeng offers users the ability to create 80 images or 26 videos for free and charges a monthly subscription fee starting at 69 yuan (US$9.70) for additional videos.
In addition, Alibaba Group Holding announced last month that it is developing a video-generating tool called Tora, based on the OpenSora foundational model. Alibaba, which owns the *South China Morning Post*, is among the major investors in MiniMax, having led a funding round in March that valued the company at more than US$2 billion. Hong Kong-listed short video app operator Kuaishou Technology also started offering a monthly subscription plan for its Kling text-to-video service in June.
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*Source: South China Morning Post* (https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3276890/chinese-ai-tiger-minimax-launches-text-video-generating-model-rival-openais-sora)*