This OpenAI-backed startup raised $12M to bring AI content to Hollywood 

London-based AI originative workplace Wonder Studios has raised $12 cardinal successful effect backing to standard accumulation amid a propulsion to bring AI-generated contented into the amusement industry. 

The circular was led by Atomico, alongside existing investors LocalGlobe and Blackbird, and builds connected Wonder’s pre-seed investment, which included executives from ElevenLabs, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI. 

Wonder volition usage the caller funds to treble its engineering squad and accelerate its propulsion into IP ownership and archetypal contented production. The squad precocious produced an AI euphony video for Lewis Capaldi’s ‘Something successful the Heavens’, created with DeepMind, YouTube, and Universal Music Group. Wonder besides released its archetypal first production, the “Beyond the Loop” anthology series.

Wonder is moving connected respective commercialized and archetypal projects for merchandise adjacent year, including an upcoming documentary with Campfire Studios, the accumulation institution down Netflix documentaries “The Menendez Brothers” and “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.” Campfire’s CEO Ross Dinerstein is an capitalist successful the startup.

The thrust for IP ownership emerges amid a question of ineligible actions from Hollywood producers targeting AI companies — some for grooming models connected their contented and for generating outputs featuring copyrighted characters. Disney and Universal Studios, for example, person sued Chinese institution MiniMax, arsenic good arsenic AI representation generator Midjourney.

Wonder’s rise besides comes arsenic Netflix goes “all in” connected generative AI arsenic a mode to marque creatives much businesslike astatine storytelling.

AI remains a divisive contented successful entertainment, with artists acrophobic that tools powered by LLMs, which person often been trained connected their enactment without consent, could endanger their livelihoods. OpenAI’s Sora 2 has travel nether peculiar disapproval for reproducing actors’ likenesses without announcement oregon consent.

Wonder positions itself arsenic “Hollywood without borders,” helping to marque AI storytelling tools accessible to each creators. The startup’s app serves arsenic a hub connecting its assemblage of creators with vocation opportunities, collaborators, and resources, according to the company.

“The adjacent decennary volition specify what creativity looks similar successful the property of AI,” said Justin Hackney, main commercialized serviceman and co-founder of Wonder Studios. “Our ngo is to guarantee that this aboriginal belongs to the storytellers. Working with starring studios, manufacture pioneers, and grassroots filmmakers, we’re already creating a span wherever exertion and artistry turn together.”