Runway Introduces 'Gen-3 Alpha' Image-To-Video AI: Focusing On Speed And Quality

The AI sphere was rather quiet, dull and boring. It rarely made ripples outside its own realm, and barely disrupted the global industry.

But since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, things changed. Tech companies began competing in an arms race that sooner than later, the technology can seemingly decimate those that didn't jump into the bandwagon and piggyback the trend.

Following the rise of text-based generative AI products, developers began creating text-to-image AI tools.

And after that, text-to-video models.

This time, it's image-to-video AI.

Among the many in the competition, is Runway, and it managed to create that.

The New York City-based startup is pushing itself ahead of the race, with what it calls the 'Gen-3 Alpha' AI, which is able to create realistic results.

The AI is part of the company's AI video model it unveiled in mid-June 2024, which is capable of generating incredibly realistic video in seconds from simple text prompts.

Gen-3 Alpha enhances that, by also accepting images as input.

To use the AI, all users need to do, is visit Runway's website, and 'try Gen 3-Alpha', where they can then upload imagery, and/or continue to enter text prompts to guide AI video generator.

What makes Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha image-to-video excels in at least one particular case, is its speed while retaining quality.

The AI takes less than a minute from a given image, with quality that matches, if not surpassing rivals.

Users also praise the artistic control and accuracy of the image generation.

On its X account, Runway also highlighted 10 interesting videos generated from still images with the Gen-3 Alpha model.

"Image to Video is major update that greatly improves the artistic control and consistency of your generations," said Runway on X.

In a dedicated page on its website, Runway said that:

Gen-3 Alpha can create videos that are 5 or 10 seconds in length.

A 10-second generated video requires 40 credits through Runway’s pay-to-play and subscription tiers, while a 5-second generation costs 20 credits.

For safety, the AI is able to automatically block users attempt to create video from explicit still imagery or well-known figures such as politicians.

"Gen-3 Alpha will be released with a new set of safeguards, including our new and improved in-house visual moderation system and C2PA provenance standards," said Runway.

Runway’s co-founder and CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela introduced the feature on his own personal account on X with a post that says "it’s time," followed by a series of posts with images made using the AI.

Runway is one of several companies, including OpenAI with its Sora, Luma AI with its Dream Machine, Pika with its self-tiled Pika, and some others that offer high quality generative video to users.

At this time, Sora remains non-public, while other AI models have been made accessible.

With the world is still grappling with the fact that copyright holders aren't happy with AI companies scraping their data, and tech companies argue that publicly-available data is free data, Gen-3 Alpha's image-to-video AI, Runway is making it even more accessible for users to make Hollywood-quality videos on the fly.

The AI is seen as a major advancement in generative AI, opening the possibilities of more creative possibilities for users.