Flora launches AI unlimited canvas: Reinventing the way creative professionals work

In today's creative industry, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an important tool. Many people can use AI models to generate stories, images or short films with just a few words. However, Flora founder and CEO Weber Wong pointed out that most existing AI tools are “designed by non-creatives for other non-creatives” and do not really meet the needs of professional creatives.

Flora recently officially launched and released a declaration emphasizing that “AI creative tools are more than just toys that generate AI mud” and said Wang and his team are determined to create a “powerful tool” that profoundly transforms the future of creative work. This declaration distinguishes Flora from existing AI tools, which, while easy to create, lack creative control, and traditional creative software often makes users feel complex and time-consuming.

Flora is not about developing better generative AI models, but rather provides an "infinite canvas" that integrates existing models. Wang emphasized, "The model is not important, and the technology is not important. The key lies in the user interface." Users can generate blocks of text, images and videos on this canvas to form a visual creative process.

For example, a user can first ask Flora to generate an image of a flower, then gradually refine it, and eventually create multiple variations that can be visually displayed on the canvas and collaborated with the customer.

Flora's initial goal is to serve visual design companies, and currently iterates its product with designers from the famous design company Pentagram. Wang hopes to enable designers to “complete 100 times more creative work” by using Flora, such as quickly generating 100 different logo designs.

Wang himself has an art and technology background. He worked at the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, and later decided to devote himself to the creative field. Flora launched an Alpha version in August this year, where users can use AI to stylize live videos by signing up for waiting lists.

Regarding some artists and professionals’ skepticism about AI, Wang said Flora’s goal is to attract users who are “curious about AI” and make those who oppose AI willing to try it out too. He stressed that Flora does not train its own AI models, but uses other companies' models and will follow social standards.

Flora’s products are available for free and are available on this basis with a professional version priced at $16 per month. Although no financing details have been disclosed yet, Flora's investors include A16Z Games Speedrun, Menlo Ventures, etc.