These are difficult and confusing days for creatives amid ongoing controversy over visual artists being tricked by AI. Now, a London-based startup wants to use AI to help artists take back control.
Exactly.ai claims to use generative AI to enable artists to retain legal ownership of their work, allowing designs to be replicated faster and at scale. The company has now raised $4.3 million in a seed funding round led by Speedinvest, with participation from InReach Ventures, Cornerstone VC, GuruDev Capital, and several angel investors. The startup claims to have 40,000 registered users.
Exactly.ai was founded in 2022 by Tonia Samsonova, a former journalist who moved from Q&A platform The Question to Russian search engine Yandex.
Samsonova explained how it works: “We allow artists, painters, illustrators to train their own AI with their own work. Then they have an algorithm that can generate images in their style. The algorithm is theirs, and all the inferences are theirs.”
The idea is that artists can use Exactly.ai to scale their artwork so that it can be sold or licensed to clients like media and advertising agencies. The startup might be on to something: According to Fortune Business Insights, the global generative AI market is expected to be worth $668 billion by 2030, and a very large slice of that pie will cater to this niche market.
Samsonova says the idea was born from her own desire to scratch an itch: “I've always been on the client side, wanting those images, but the best creatives are always busy, so for clients, this is an opportunity to work with the best talent in the world.” [Artists’] “Clients care about image quality and want to source imagery for their brands from world-class creators,” she said.
The founders say the startup's main competitors include sites like Upwork and Fiverr, which artists and illustrators sometimes use to scale their work.
“We benefit from commercially active illustrators because we are able to meet more demand. They pay us a subscription and our income quadruples,” Samsonova said.
The company is based on a combination of the basic model provided by Pixart and the startup's own algorithms, “which can understand the user's style and create images,” she said.
“Our most valuable and unique training data comes from 40,000 artists who have uploaded millions of images to our platform,” the founders said. “We use data provided by our artist community to perfect quality across all styles and genres. Artists provide us with their work so that our technology does not compete with them for work, but rather enhances their ability to earn income from their creative work. We also incorporate over 1 million pieces of open art data from museums, all CC0 licensed.”
“Exactly.ai represents a groundbreaking step forward for the creative arts sector. Tonia and her team have developed a platform that enables artists to embrace generative AI as a partner in their creative process,” Julian Bresin, partner at Speedinvest, said in a statement.