Sunday, September 1, 2024

Meet the OG of AI-powered art

Sunday, September 1, 2024

Image Credits: NightCafe

While NightCafe doesn't get the publicity of rivals like Midjourney, it's a pioneer in AI art generation. Kyle Wiggers profiles the 5-year-old Australian startup, which has bootstrapped its way to profitability "most months" and now has more than 25 million users.

Borrowing its name from a Vincent van Gogh painting, NightCafe started out as an AI art marketplace that offered image-generation tools for free. But those tools turned out to be the company's real business.

"We're a UI and community company," said co-founder Elle Russell. "NightCafe doesn't have any internal AI or machine learning capability; we aggregate the available image models and make them fun and accessible to use."

Keep reading to see what else TechCrunch is covering this week.

Weekend news and opinion

Image Credits: Matt Winkelmeyer / Staff / Getty Images

The Grammy Awards and AI: The music industry's Grammy Awards recently announced it would start accepting submissions created with artificial intelligence. Dominic-Madori Davis speaks with Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy (which is responsible for the Grammys), about what is and isn't allowed. Read more

It's true, many home robots still suck: Brian Heater looks at why the industry hasn't advanced much beyond the Roomba. Apparently, it isn't due to a lack of consumer demand or manufacturer interest. Instead, blame pricing, functionality and efficacy. Read more

Rounding up Africa's biggest startup exits: Africa has seen some significant exits, including InstaDeep (acquired by BioNTech for $550 million) and Paystack (acquired by Stripe for more than $200 million). Tage Kene-Okafor highlights the continent's biggest deals. Read more

What else we're reading 📖

After the outcry around the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France last weekend, The New York Times published an in-depth profile of Durov's life and career. The profile focuses on his anti-establishment streak, which seems to have put a target on his back. Read more

Also, Wired interviewed Signal president Meredith Whittaker about surveillance capitalism and what comes next for the encrypted messaging app. Read more