Lenza AI Tops Charts
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John Coogan explains how a simple AI photo filter app called Lenza became hugely successful.
"Lenza was this app where you would download it and upload 10 selfies of yourself from your camera roll. Then it would generate AI images that looked like you - like it would be your face but on Superman's body.
It was based on Stable Diffusion, which is this open source software package, and DreamBooth, which was a paper Google put out. No one knew what those technical things meant - your aunt doesn't know what Stable Diffusion or DreamBooth is, but she probably downloaded and paid for Lenza Magic Avatars and had that as her profile picture for a bit.
It became this fun viral moment that was really successful. It reached number one in the App Store and made a bunch of money, even though it was just a simple implementation of existing AI technology."
John Coogan
John is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Founders Fund. He regularly publishes YouTube videos about technology companies and Silicon Valley. He previously co-founded two startups; a nicotine company named Lucy and a food company named Soylent.