A French startup called Presti is promising to do away with costly product photo shoots by harnessing AI technology to turn a single image into multiple photos.
TechCrunch notes that when it’s time for companies to release a new furniture collection, companies spend a “small fortune” on photo shoots.
It is a problem that Presti is looking to solve by using generative AI to turn a single product photo into a realistic lifestyle campaign with multiple shots.
The technology is similar to that introduced by Amazon, Ebay, Google, and others which tries to help sellers improve their listing photos by generating new backgrounds. However, Presti differs in that it is targeting companies that have photography budgets.
Furthermore, Presti has just raised $3.5 million in a seed round led by the global tech investment firm Partech.
“Very quickly, we picked up the phone and talked with 50 potential users,” Presti co-founder and CEO Nabil Toumi tells TechCrunch.
“And everyone was saying the same thing. Creating product visuals was a process that took a very long time, cost a lot of money and they didn’t have a simple solution for creating these photos. At the same time, it was really the most important asset for brands so that they can create a unique identity and sell online.”
Toumi says it began targeting furniture companies because he realized their photo shoots require renting a nice house, transporting products, and many high logistics costs.
“And those photo shoots were planned months in advance and ended up costing them hundreds of thousands, even millions of euros a year,” Toumi adds.
Presti uses Stable Diffusion XL as its AI foundation model which can be customized for specific needs. The startup uses over “75,000 images of ultra-high quality photos of furniture” to finetune the model for this type of product photography.
Presti says it doesn’t just offer customers different backgrounds but small additions like cushions that will “project a realistic shadow.”
It is not all bad news for photographers, furniture brands have several variations of the same model of couch with different textures and colors. Presti still struggles with swapping materials but hopes to improve that in the future.
As TechCrunch notes, whether photographers, location stylists, and other skilled humans can be entirely replaced by artificial intelligence remains an open question. But the fact that someone with millions of dollars of investment is even trying is a concern.
Image credits: Presti.