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The rapidly evolving AI video generation market has changed again: Luma AI, a startup backed by famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, today announced the free public beta of its new AI video generation model, Dream Machine, and is already facing a crush from users.
Although the model promises generations of up to 120 frames in 120 seconds (2 minutes or one frame per second), the reality is that many users have waited hours in a digital queue on the Luma Dream Machine website for their video to be processed. According to the company, this is due to the enormous amount of traffic.
“Hey everyone, thank you very much for all the enthusiasm and support!” wrote Barkley Dai, Luma’s product and growth leader, in a post on the company’s Discord channel earlier today. “We are current[ly] faced with high demands and working to increase our capacity! Not all generations will be lost, but they will simply remain in line. I will update the status here as soon as we have additional capacity!”
A few hours later, Dai provided the following update:
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“Our team has added extra capacity and the queue is now gradually getting shorter! In the short term, we estimate that it may take several hours to fully process the current backlog of coming generations. Under normal circumstances, it only takes 2-3 minutes to convert your prompt into a video. We appreciate your patience as we deal with the influx of people interested in trying this revolutionary tool. The generation rate will continue to improve...
They will be generated as quickly as possible and we appreciate everyone’s patience and support today and encourage you to keep checking back for the rest of the week and beyond as we improve Dream Machine.“
The high-end AI video generator comes from little-known startup Luma AI, which VentureBeat previously reported when it released its text-to-3D asset generator model Genie 1.0 in November 2023. Luma AI has raised more than $70 million, with $43 million of that in its Series B starting in January 2024, according to TechCrunch.
Smart from a PR strategy perspective, the company previously showcased Dream Machine to prominent AI creators and filmmakers, who were given the opportunity to test their skills at generating videos from text prompts and still images ahead of the opening of today’s public beta, and have been posting their work throughout the day.
Others who just got their hands on it also find it extremely impressive, inviting comparisons with OpenAI’s Sora, while some say it’s already superior.
In VentureBeat’s limited testing of Luma’s Dream Machine web app, the text-to-video feature performed only with sporadic accuracy in terms of displaying what we asked for in our prompt. However, the video was generated after several minutes and featured extremely smooth, non-jerky motion and highly detailed, high-resolution images.
Clearly the race to create compelling AI video models is entering a new gear and OpenAI’s Sora, still only available to a small group of carefully selected users, now faces stiff competition – not to mention fellow AI video model providers Runway, Pika and the new Chinese competitor Kling.