Forget Sora, Runway is the AI video maker coming to blow your mind

Artificial intelligence-powered video maker Runway has officially launched its new Gen-3 Alpha model after teasing its debut a few weeks ago. The Gen-3 Alpha video creator offers major upgrades in creating hyper-realistic videos from user prompts. It's a significant advancement over the Gen-2 model released early last year. 

Runway's Gen-3 Alpha is aimed at a range of content creators, including marketing and advertising groups. The startup claims to outdo any competition when it comes to handling complex transitions, as well as key-framing and human characters with expressive faces. The model was trained on a large video and image dataset annotated with descriptive captions, enabling it to generate highly realistic video clips. As of this writing, the company is not revealing the sources of its video and image datasets.

The new model is accessible to all users signed up on the RunwayML platform, but unlike Gen-1 and Gen-2, Gen-3 Alpha is not free. Users must upgrade to a paid plan, with prices starting at $ 12 per month per editor. This move suggests Runway is ready to professionalize its products after having the chance to refine them, thanks to all of the people playing with the free models. 

Initially, Gen-3 Alpha will power Runway's text-to-video mode, allowing users to create videos using natural language prompts. In the coming days, the model's capabilities will expand to include image-to-video and video-to-video modes. Additionally, Gen-3 Alpha will integrate with Runway's control features, such as Motion Brush, Advanced Camera Controls, and Director Mode.

Runway stated that Gen-3 Alpha is only the first in a new line of models built for large-scale multimodal training. The end goal is what the company calls “General World Models,” which will be capable of representing and simulating a wide range of real-world situations and interactions.

AI Video Race

The immediate question is whether Runway's advancements can meet or exceed what OpenAI is doing with its attention-grabbing Sora model. While Sora promises one-minute-long videos, Runway's Gen-3 Alpha currently supports video clips that are only up to 10 seconds long. Despite this limitation, Runway is betting on Gen-3 Alpha's speed and quality to set it apart from Sora, at least until it can augment the model as they have planned, making it capable of producing longer videos. 

The race isn't just about Sora. Stability AI, Pika, Luma Labs, and others are all eager to claim the title of best AI video creator. As the competition heats up, Runway's release of Gen-3 Alpha is a strategic move to assert a leading position in the market.

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Looking for Google Pixel 4 deals? These EE tariffs blow everything else away right now

The Google Pixel 4, the latest phone from the search engine giant, has been around for a good few months now. In that time we've seen prices shoot up, down, left, right and just about every direction imaginable but now, costs seem to have settled…at least for one network.

Currently, the EE network seems to have secured all of the cheapest Google Pixel 4 deals. That means currently there are options ranging from £23 a month (with lots of upfront costs, of course) through to free upfront plans on EE giving you plenty of choice.

However, when there is so much choice, picking the perfect plan can be daunting. That's why we've analysed a heap of Pixel 4 plans and picked out the top three available on EE right now.

We've listed these three plans below so you can find your perfect contract. And if you find them all lacking in the data department, try this 100GB data Three plan out for size.

The Google Pixel 4 offers a number of innovative features and major upgrades. It's the first phone to fully implement motion sense features, allowing you to use the phone with gestures.

The processor has gotten a major upgrade, finally bringing the Pixel range up to competitive standards of RAM, and the OLED screen has seen major improvements, now capable of 90HZ refresh rates and offering ambient EQ technology that lets you adjust the screen to your environment.

Read our full Google Pixel 4 review and Pixel 4 XL review

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