Like medical beauty, this is not counterfeiting, but just helping young people dig a more ideal self.
The explosion of the “Duck Camera” app
Not long ago, the explosion of the “Wonderful Duck Camera” App not only caused a great earthquake in the “photo industry”, but also proved to people that, in addition to dialog robots, AI in the field of images can also produce a variety of explosive models.
At the same time in Europe and the United States, an AI-related selfie also caught fire, however. In contrast to the “relatively real” route of Wonder Duck, this one called BeFake is completely the opposite of AI selfies.
BeFake calls itself “the first AI-enhanced social network,” and it completely abandons the “authenticity” of social media, and with the help of AI, brings its “falseness” to the extreme.
The app encourages users to think out of the box, boldly using AI to transform everyday photos into fantastical scenes, and then sharing this ‘creative work’ with others. As Alias Technologies, the company behind the app, defines it, “a channel of expression that empowers users to connect with their friends through AI-generated visual effects”.
Similar to the popularity of “Wonderful Duck”, BeFake AI was launched on Google Play and Apple Store in August, and in just a few weeks after its launch, it has already become immensely popular, topping the free charts of the App Store in the U.S., the U.K., and France.
Meanwhile, the team has already secured $3 million in funding from venture capital firms, and maintaining triple-digit growth gives BeFake an edge when it comes to negotiating its next round of funding.
At a time when Snap and TikTok filters have long been played out, why is a “fake” app still able to excite young people and investors, and what opportunities does BeFake’s success reveal?
AI ‘Enhanced Self’
BeFake uses black as the theme color of the app, and adds the same dark purple color as the icon, which makes the app a little bit more magical.
The app offers a user-friendly interface that displays a variety of features to explore, mainly three different information streams, including ‘friends’, ‘top defects’ and ‘discovery’.
Once users complete the registration of their cell phone number and create an account, they can start receiving notifications and interact with the BeFake community, freely add friends, and browse AI-generated images.
As for the core gameplay of the APP, BeFake is the same as BeReal.
At some point every day, it will remind you that it’s time to take a picture and activate both your front and rear cameras.
With BeFake, however, instead of uploading raw, unedited photos, you use AI to edit and publish them. And, from the moment the timer goes off, you’ll have 20 minutes to finish “uploading.
When editing photos, you can use BeFake’s existing style cues and custom location cues to generate spectacular and surreal images - for example, instead of sharing another photo from your bedroom, you can change the background to a world landmark like the Grand Canyon or the Great Pyramids of Giza.
Additionally, you can enter custom text prompts such as ‘turn us into mouse elves’ and explore the endless possibilities of creating your own digital world.
Indeed, BeFake does its best to make any moment magical, so you’ll never have a boring post again. In this regard, Dumont, one of the founders of BeFake, has also said, “BeFake can turn boring into exciting in five seconds.”
And its real fun lies precisely in encouraging you to explore your creativity and imagination to change and create your images. As its slogan goes: Why go after the “real” when the “fake” can be more interesting?
And, sometimes “fantasy, more than reality, is the best representation of authenticity.”
After all, while the photo is ‘fake’, the user is ‘real’ - it’s you. When you take a photo, you recognize it, and then you alter it with AI and you still recognize it as you. You can push your limits, but it’s still you at the center.
Once you’re happy with your photo, you can “upload” your AI-enhanced photo to your Friends or Discovery streams, and share it on other social media outlets.
If you’re super creative and post your images publicly on the Discovery stream, you’re likely to build a following.
Scroll through the “top defects” and you’ll see Jokers, dragons, cyborgs, ancient gods, and even the odd Snoop Dogg.
Additionally, users can swipe left and right to compare the original photo to the AI-processed one.
BeFake is currently available on iOS and Android.
Its basic functionality is free, but premium users can get more features by ‘subscribing’. For example, subscribers can post their own photos anonymously, and even view comments, ratings, and other feedback without having to upload their own personal updates.
In addition, subscription benefits include the ability to delay posting without being penalized, view friends’ past updates, and receive unlimited AI-generated prompts to generate more cool images.
Users can subscribe to BeFake on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis for $2.99/week, $9.99/month, or $99.99/year, respectively, and points can be purchased individually for just $9.99 for 500 points.
BeFake’s business model is pretty clear at this point - pay by subscription.
In short, BeFake AI is essentially a social app with AI-generated images at its core, and its user-friendly interface ensures a seamless experience from ‘imagine’ to ‘picture’. Users can join the BeFake community, display themselves ‘authentically’ through ‘fake’ representations, and share their ‘creativity’ with friends.
Gaming experience spawns ‘virtual’ socialization
BeFake is the first product from Alias Technologies, an AI software development company.
Founded in 2021, the company specializes in generative media and multimodal AI systems.
Founded by Kristen Garcia Dumont and Tracy Lane, who previously served as CEO and COO, respectively, of gaming giant Machine Zone, Dumont led the development and launch of two of the world’s most lucrative mobile social games, War of the Worlds: Rise and Final Fantasy XV: The New Imperium, which have grossed more than $1 billion. Lane is responsible for community, governance, compliance and platform partnerships.
During their years in gaming, they realized that gamers could build deep connections and interact well with each other through the platform’s algorithms without using their real identities.
This made them realize, “You can actually build a network of people around common interests. For games, common interests are games. For social networks, common interests can be the fun of creating really creative AI work.”
So it became their plan to combine AI and computer vision with social networks to break down the “barriers to human interaction” through AI.
Immediately, the two founders started BeFake AI, a project that aims to “democratize” social media by fostering a “creative community” and encouraging users to connect through the creation of imaginative AI content, thus creating a new form of human-AI interaction.
And their bet at the time was that “people will be interacting with more and more robots. If we can be one of the first companies to introduce AI in a social environment, that would be something really special because we see the spark of AI in the game.” “But two years ago, before generative AI became popular, we thought we were crazy.”
When asked why the name ‘BeFake’, Dumont explains, “They’re trying to do away with the whole concept of current social media: you either need to post-glorify yourself or pre-curate yourself.” “The anxiety and sense of vulnerability that people often feel when posting ‘real’ content, keeping it real is very stressful and makes socializing difficult. Therefore, BeFake allows people to create AI fake images to augment themselves.”
For now, BeFake is still focused on generating interesting still images through AI and hopes to turn more content consumers into content creators by making the complex technology easier to use, but may move into video in the future.
As for the future of BeFake, the social app, founder Dumont sees its growth as dependent on the platform ‘community’.
She believes that “the moat of most AI apps is not the underlying technology, but the community.”
“We have all the proprietary technology, and only when the open source community gets bigger and bigger and the open source tools get better and better, you can better utilize those tools and get better and better.” “And BeFake AI, as a bot, can equally contribute content alongside content that people create themselves. So we’re very focused on building community, and to do that you have to be able to respond quickly to the community.”
In fact, one of the ways the company is already working in this direction is by learning what kind of AI images users like so it can make its algorithms even better.
And, over time, BeFake will need more computing power to run. So, like other companies, BeFake needs to strike a balance between offering free AI generation to users while charging for the use of computing resources.
Not long ago, BeFake announced that it had received $3 million in seed funding led by Khosla Ventures. Other investors in the round included Next Coast Ventures, Maveron Ventures, Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale and WS Investments.
“BeFake is an antidote to over-curated social media and a medium for free self-expression” “As an AI Prompt to Get Started (Prompt) APP, BeFake represents not only the growing presence of AI in our social circles, but also a revolution in the way social media is interacted with.” Dumont said.
