The race for text-to-video generation is heating up as another AI tool has emerged in the past few months by the name of Hotshot. The tool allows video generation of 10 seconds in its free tier feature and free users can currently produce 3 videos per day.
On the first look, the videos do look ultra-realistic and do match perfectly with the query.
The people behind the Hotshot AI tool are Aakash Sastry, John Mullan, and Duncan Crawbuck. The company opened a public preview of the tool on 19th August 2024. As per the LinkedIn profile of the co-founder, the company may have begun its journey in November 2022.
As per the company’s website, the team consists of only 4 members at the time of writing this post.
Concern over video generation of Public figures
One of the major misuse of an AI engine is the reproduction of a video involving public figures doing controversial things. One of the co-founders in its Twitter post dated 12th March 2024 showed the capability of its Hotshot ACT-1 engine that produced video involving public figures like Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and more doing non-controversial things.
It does seem that the current engine has been installed with ethical consideration to not produce public figures with total resemblance for video generation like its previous video shared by the co-founder on 12th March 2024. We tested the current AI engine on their website with a query of “Elon Musk laughing sarcastically at Mark Zuckerberg” and the output video had two characters far from resembling ELon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
The interface of the tool deserves some praise. Once you have entered the query, the screen becomes grainy as the video is being produced. The Hotshot AI tool has been trained on nearly 600 million videos and users can produce up to 10-second videos even in higher resolution than 720p. The videos can be extended and allow for combining the audio from other sources through secondary tools.
Pricing
The tool currently allows only 3 generations for free users. For $29 monthly subscription, users can get 100 generations in total per month with no limit on daily generations limit whereas for the $99 a month plan, users would be able to get 300 generations per month. It is interesting to note that the videos produced from even the free version can be used for commercial purposes.
Can Hotshot dilute the hype of OpenAI’s Sora?
After its ChatGPT revelation in November 2022, OpenAI shocked the world again with its text-to-video- generator Sora. The company released a demo video in February 2024 produced by the AI tool that showcased its pioneering prowess in its text-to-video segment. However, nearly 6 months later, the AI tool is yet to be available to the masses. Only a handful of professionals across the world have access to the tool to advance the model to the absolute best for professionals. Hotshot may acquire the lions share of the market if their tool becomes available to the masses before OpenAI’s Sora.
