China News Service, Hangzhou, March 11 (Xi Jinyanlan Yini) In the drizzle, a girl wearing a cheongsam was boating on the West Lake. She held a paper umbrella and looked at the lake thoughtfully... This is a 15-second video generated after the user entered the three prompt words "Hangzhou West Lake, Girl on the Boat, Raining" in the artificial intelligence Wensheng video model Mobius.
Currently, the artificial intelligence industry is in a stage of rapid development.
On this "hot" track, there is a group of unknown entrepreneurs who are exploring the infinite possibilities of artificial intelligence.
Among them, there are two "post-90s" people from Hangzhou, Zhejiang, Liu Pei and Qi Long.
The Mobius they developed has generated 1 million seconds of video for users around the world in more than 60 days since it was launched.
And behind this is a dream-chasing story spanning four seasons.
The entrepreneurial dream of “infinite loop”
"Möbius strip" is a mathematical concept of topology, which appears as a perfect closed loop with an infinite loop of paths.
Liu Pei said that the name "Mobius" means the infinite pursuit of scientific progress and technological development.
In recent years, the artificial intelligence industry has entered a period of rapid development, with more and more young people joining this new blue ocean.
The story of Liu Pei and Qi Long is an epitome of this.
In a space of more than 80 square meters, there are two desks and two computers. This slightly simple office supports the two people's entrepreneurial dream.
It is here that they build a virtual world bit by bit that cannot be measured using traditional measurement units.
Photos of many scientists are posted on the walls of the simple office.
Photo by Lan Yini
Before becoming fellow travelers, both were in the stage of career exploration.
After graduation, Qi Long worked as a management trainee in a taxi-hailing software company and as a 3D reconstruction algorithm engineer in the logistics field. Liu Pei once developed a social APP.
In 2020, the two paid attention to the trend of artificial intelligence and decided to invest in the "new blue ocean".
While pursuing their dreams, Qi Long and Liu Pei studied physics, mathematics, computers, etc. Qi Long and Liu Pei, who were not from a major, studied many subjects by themselves. The most common thing at home was books, followed by photos posted on the wall, including Newton, Hawking, Galileo, Marie Curie, Einstein... Qi Long said that he hopes there will be an Asian face in the group photos of giant scientists in the future.
In the past four years, the two of them have hardly traveled. The farthest place they have been is Qiandao Lake in Hangzhou.
Occasionally when they go out for something, they would put the book in their bag and take it out to read while waiting for the bus.
Liu Pei said that four years of studying and working day in and day out was boring, but it also made them feel calm and at ease.
"Every time we make progress, we are very happy and satisfied." Liu Pei said.
One step closer to the dream
There are only four people in the Mobius team. Qi Long and Liu Pei are responsible for technology research and development, and there are two partners. The total project investment is only about one million yuan.
Like Sora, enter text, and Mobius will create a story script based on the text content, then create a video script based on the story script, and finally generate a video.
Screenshot of the short video generated by Mobius.
Photo provided by interviewee
Take the video of West Lake Girl as an example. It is composed of 5 shots including wide angle, medium shot, close-up, etc. The picture is from far to near, and the tone is quite cinematic. Overall, it seems like a story is unfolding.
According to Qi Long, AI Wensheng video models like Mobius and Sora have two major technological breakthroughs compared to other AI video models: first, the revolutionary change in video duration from 4 seconds to 60 seconds; From meaningless video clips to coherent content that is truly meaningful.
It is understood that the only "publicity" Mobius has done so far is that Liu Pei posted two user-generated videos on Reddit, which received 140,000 views and were on the hot search list on the website.
Liu Pei said that with zero advertising investment, Mobius has generated more than 1 million seconds of video for 2,000 users from all over the world.
Although revenue has not yet been achieved, this data is undoubtedly an affirmation of the R&D team’s staged achievements and greatly encourages them. “I feel like I am one step closer to my dream.”
Chasing dreams has no end
"Only five people at most know what we are doing." Neither of them has the habit of sharing their lives. Even on the day Mobius was released this year, they only took a photo of them celebrating with a drink in front of the computer screen and silently treasured it in the album. inside.
This hard-working character not only made Mobius what it is today, but also caused them to miss many opportunities.
After the video on Reddit was released, it attracted many users to flock to the website. However, since the computing power of one Mobius server can only process one user's instructions at the same time, they can only watch the users who entered the website leave because they were unable to try it out. The opportunity for user growth was missed.
Liu Pei said that the team is working hard to optimize the basic model of the algorithm.
The short-term development goal of Mobius is to "take two steps" between technology and market, optimize the basic model based on specific implementation scenarios, and promote and apply it to the AI short video production market as soon as possible.
In the long term, they will be committed to deepening the understanding of physical laws by big video models, so that robots will have smarter "brains", scientific research will have more powerful "assistants", and the industry will move from automation to truly "intelligent" "change……
"Future entrepreneurship requires technology and hard work. Technology ensures that we succeed, and hard work ensures that we resist setbacks and difficulties." They firmly believe that entrepreneurship must have determination, dare to "sit on the bench", endure loneliness, and be calm. If you are serious about doing basic research, you can't just focus on the application layer, and these require extremely hard work.
But they believe that they will not be alone: looking back, China already has spiritual role models such as BYD's Wang Chuanfu and Ningde era's Zeng Yuqun to give them strength; looking forward, they know that there are many aspiring young people like them who are exploring, In struggle.
(over)