It even sparked a whole trend of creators trying the “Squish It” effect — or Pikaffect, as the company calls its AI goodies — on their own videos.

Pika added four more Pikafects two weeks later. Today, the company hopes to continue building on its success to become known to the general public by release three new Pikaffects in time for Halloween: levitate, pop eyes, and decapitate – all of these do what they sound like.

“We’re trying to bring fun to the forefront of AI, making it accessible not just to creators, but to everyone from kids to grandparents,” said Matan Cohen-Grumi, creative director founder of Pika, in a video call interview with VentureBeat. earlier this week.

To use new and previous Pikaffects, Pika users follow the same simple steps: visit Pika.art, sign in with a Google account, Discord account, Facebook/Meta account, or email address, then navigate to the bottom menu bar to add a new image.

After tapping the Image button marked with a paperclip icon (highlighted above in a screenshot), the user can take a new image or add one previously uploaded from their device or desktop. cloud photo library.

Then, by tapping the magic wand-marked Pikaffects button (circled above in the annotated screenshot), the user can view all 13 preset Pika effects.

Finally, the user can generate a video based on the screenshot by pressing the star button (circled above in the annotated screenshot).

“What I would suggest is that everyone go to our website and try it,” Cohen-Grumi advocated. “It’s so, so accessible.”

The creative director claimed that Pika’s effects only take a few seconds to generate a new video from a still image.

However, in VentureBeat’s limited testing, the site seemed overloaded with traffic and stuck for a while, with some images failing to generate videos so far on the site. free enterprise tierwhich offers 150 credits to the user each month, enough for 10 videos (1 video costs 15 credits on Pika’s scale). There are also Standard, Pro, and Unlimited tiers for $10, $35, and $95 per month (20% off when paying annually) with a gradually increasing number of credits.

When asked about the downtime we’ve experienced, Cohen-Grumi noted that Pika’s newfound success with Pikaffects has come with support challenges.

“We had lots and lots of traffic, more than created at launch, but it was all resolved very quickly,” he told VentureBeat.

And seeking to dispel the notion that Pika was competing on novelty rather than realism, he also claimed that Pika 1.5 “can deliver extremely realistic results with natural movement.”

As for what’s next for Pika: more Pika effects for every important holiday or season of the year? — Cohen-Grumi played coy.

“We’re always working on the next step, making sure everything we release is fun and accessible to everyone,” he said.