TikTok parent brings video-creating AI to App Store, Play Store
TikTok parent company ByteDance has created a competitor to OpenAI's Sora, called Jimeng AI, and it's now available to Chinese users on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Jimeng AI is able to create short videos or images from a user's text input. Prompts will generate a video lasting only a few seconds, with quality that seems to be noticeably behind Sora, for the time being. The big draw here is how quickly the technology works, and how its outputs can be swiftly integrated with other products.
Jimeng AI is free to use for up to 29 videos or 80 pictures per month. For any more than that, users will have to pay up: monthly subscription plans start at 69 yuan, or just under $10. The quality of output that users get for this price seems to fall short of the more well-known contender, according to available samples. Even so, it can still be considered competitive in its home market. This is because OpenAI has essentially pulled Sora out of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau, banning its use. This leaves the relatively new Jimeng AI to compete with options from the likes of Alibaba and Tencent, along with a number of more focused startups. It is worth noting that Alibaba's option, dubbed Tora, is based on Sora, thus the similarity in name.
Jimeng AI first released back in May of 2024 as a desktop application. This was followed by a limited mobile release in July, with the app landing on a number of smaller Android-only markets around the country. The bulk of these smaller app markets were maintained by given device manufacturers or carriers, such as Huawei's app store. This mass rollout marks Jimeng AI's first time being widely and easily available on the iPhone and other iOS devices, along with a massive expansion of its availability on Android. With this expansion, ByteDance is pushing Jimeng AI into market space previously dominated by its competitors. Given the nature of generative AI and how products based on it tend to benefit from mass adoption, this is a unique opportunity for Jimeng AI to catch up to more longstanding options within the space in both user adoption and output quality.
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