Guests: Abby Kearns (LinkedIn) | Kent Keirsey (LinkedIn)
Company: Invoke AI (Twitter) 
Show: Let’s Talk

With the Hollywood strikes signaling a backlash against AI, it is clear there is still some uncertainty about the future of AI in the creative field. Yet, when certain technologies have only been available to the bigger studios previously, many would argue that AI is helping to democratize access to these generative capabilities. One company that is focusing on making these technologies more accessible to everyone is Invoke AI.

In this episode of TFiR: Let’s Talk, Swapnil Bhartiya sits down with two Invoke AI executives: Board Member Abby Kearns and Founder and CEO Kent Keirsey to talk about some of the perceived challenges of AI, and how the company is helping to democratize these technologies.  They also discuss the impact generative AI has had in the creative field.

Key highlights from this video interview:

• Keirsey gives us an overview of Invoke AI explaining that they evolved out of the Stable Diffusion ecosystem. The company aims to help creative teams scale, deploy custom models, and accelerate their creative pipeline. He discusses their open-source product and how they are working to extend it into the cloud for enterprises.
• Kearns updates us on what she has been focusing on, explaining that she is on several boards and is actively angel investing and advising. She tells us about working with Invoke AI and why she felt drawn to being involved with the company.
• Generative AI has rekindled the hype in AI, and Kearns feels that there are a lot of opportunities for investments and innovation. While GPT has spurred a lot of visual creations, the question of rights in IP is a significant topic. She discusses how Invoke AI has built a product that can withstand the regulatory wave that is coming.
• Foundational models are serving as the basis for training and customizing the technology to specific applications. Keirsey talks about how this trend is playing out in the creative field and how Invoke AI is helping artists see where they fit into the ecosystem while still complying with the evolving regulatory landscape.
• There is still concern over to what extent AI will take people’s jobs, but Kearns does not believe this is the case seeing it as a force multiplier. She talks about some of the use cases they are seeing in Invoke AI such as helping game developers develop games quicker, and aiding artists and content developers to accelerate their time to market.
• Keirsey touches on the Hollywood strike and what he feels are the key causes of frustration. He feels that AI is helping democratize the access to generative capabilities that only larger studios used to have and he believes we will start to see new forms of distribution stemming from this, like has been the case in music with Spotify.
• Kearns discusses her involvement on the board of Invoke AI saying she was particularly drawn to helping Keirsey navigate a large open-source community and building an enterprise-grade product on top of that.
• Keirsey feels that they are enabling their open-source work with a sustainable business model. He talks about how being open and transparent with the community has helped in this journey and how he believes building this product will make the technology accessible to everybody.

This summary was written by Emily Nicholls.