Latest news with #Farbman
Indian Express
19-07-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Lightricks launches LTXV, its new AI model that generates 60-second videos
Lightricks, the Israeli tech company best known for apps like Facetune and Videoleap, is expanding into professional production of AI generative videos that will set them apart from the competitors With the launch of its new model, LTXV, the company claims it can produce continuous AI-generated video content exceeding 60 seconds. This is significantly longer than what's currently possible with leading models like OpenAI's Sora, Google's Veo or Runway's Gen-4.. According to Lightricks co-founder and CEO Zeev Farbman, LTXV 'unlocks a new era for generative media.' He explains that the model is designed to start streaming results immediately, generating the first second almost instantly and building the rest of the sequence on the fly. The system uses overlapping frame chunks to preserve continuity—ensuring that characters, motion, and storyline remain consistent across time. This autoregressive approach is similar to the way large language models like ChatGPT generate text, except LTXV applies it visually, frame by frame. LTXV reportedly delivers output much faster than competitors like Veo 3, Runway Gen-4, or Kuaishou's Kling, which often make users wait several minutes for a few seconds of video. In a live demo, Lightricks showcased a continuous 60-second video featuring a woman cooking as a gorilla walks in and hugs her, an example of how the model maintains narrative flow without stuttering or abrupt transitions. That LTXV is open source and unrestricted by a proprietary API is notable. The model will be available on GitHub and Hugging Face as open weights. It is free to use for individuals and small teams earning less $10 million annually. According to Farbman, this supports Lightricks' 'open development for real-world application' approach, which gives developers and independent artists the freedom to expand upon the core engine. From a technical standpoint, the new model is fast and lightweight. It can be powered by a single Nvidia H100 or even high-end consumer GPUs. However, Farbman points out that available benchmarks for other models often require multiple H100s to produce just five seconds of high-resolution video. Veo 3 from Google LLC is the only AI video model that can also create its own audio tracks. Nevertheless, Lightricks' most recent developments coincide with the big AI video production companies. Everyone is making efforts to set themselves apart from the competition, and its rivals can boast a number of distinctive features of their own.
Forbes
16-07-2025
- Forbes
LTX Video Breaks The 60-Second Barrier, Redefining AI Video As A Longform Medium
Lightricks, the Israeli AI startup best known for viral mobile apps like Facetune and Videoleap, is pushing deeper into professional production territory with a technical milestone that sets it apart from its peers in generative video. With the release of its new autoregressive video model, LTXV, the company claims it can now generate clips over 60 seconds long, eight times the current standard length for AI video. That includes OpenAI's Sora, Google's Veo, and Runway's Gen-4, none of which yet support real-time rendering at this scale. According to CEO and co-founder Zeev Farbman, this breakthrough 'unlocks a new era for generative media,' not just because of length, but because of what extended sequences enable: narrative. 'It's the difference between a visual stunt and a scene,' Farbman told me in a recent interview. 'AI video becomes a medium for storytelling, not just a demo.' LTXV's new architecture streams video in real time, returning the first second almost instantly and building the rest on the fly. The system uses small chunks of overlapping frames to condition what comes next, allowing continuity of motion, character, and action throughout the sequence. It's the same autoregressive approach that powers large language models like ChatGPT, applied to visual storytelling frame-by-frame. I saw the demo working on a Zoom call last week. Most systems, including top models like Veo 3, Runway 4, and Kling, make you wait minutes for generations. LTX is much faster. The system rendered a continuous 60-second scene of a woman cooking as a gorilla entered the kitchen and hugged her. The video streamed as it was generated, with very few pauses. Another scene showed a car passing under a bridge, then emerging on the other side, then continuing its journey—all without jarring cuts or jumps in logic. Particularly notable is that LTXV is open source, not locked behind a proprietary API. The model will be made available as open weights on GitHub and Hugging Face. It's free to use for individuals and small teams generating less than $10 million in revenue. Farbman says this aligns with Lightricks' strategy of 'open development for real-world application,' empowering both indie creators and developers to build on the core engine. From a technical perspective, the new model is fast and light. It runs on a single Nvidia H100, or even on high-end consumer GPUs. By contrast, Farbman points out, public benchmarks for other models often require multiple H100s just to produce five seconds of high-resolution video. The implications go far beyond YouTube clips. Lightricks envisions uses in advertising, real-time game cutscenes, adaptive educational content, and augmented reality performances. Imagine an AR character performing onstage with a musician, rendered live and reacting in real time.'We've reached the point where AI video isn't just prompted, but truly directed,' added Yaron Inger, co-founder and CTO. 'This leap turns AI video into a longform storytelling platform, and not just a visual trick.' This is part of a broader roadmap for LTX Studio, the company's browser-based production platform that offers script-to-scene authoring, character tracking, and style consistency. Multimodal support, including motion capture and audio-based conditioning, will be released soon. Next up: 4K video output and seamless frame interpolation for smoother motion. Farbman was quick to acknowledge that there's still work to be done. 'Prompt adherence in longform content is the next big frontier,' he said. 'We're seeing dramatic improvements, but scenes with complex interpersonal action are still hard.' Still, what I saw was far beyond what most AI video tools can manage today. As for monetization, Farbman says Lightricks is in talks with larger studios and platforms about commercial licensing and revenue share deals, while keeping development open for the broader creative community. 'We believe AI filmmaking shouldn't just be for engineers,' he said. 'It should be for storytellers.'
Forbes
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Philly-Based Biopic ‘Audrey's Children' Spotlights Unsung Hero Of Pediatric Cancer Treatment
For over a century, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (better known by its acronym CHOP) has been at the forefront of revolutionary medical breakthroughs aimed at saving and improving the lives of young people. Those hundred years are full of incredible true stories and larger-than-life personalities. Personalities like British oncologist Audrey Evans, whose campaign to develop a novel treatment for children suffering from neuroblastoma in the late 1960s takes center stage in the inspiring and tear-jerking medical drama, Audrey's Children (now playing in theaters everywhere). Evans, who continued to work well into her 80s before retiring, not only created a successful staging system that is still used to this day, but she also proved instrumental in the founding of the Ronald McDonald House charity, which provides free housing to families seeking treatment far away from home. Producer/screenwriter Julia Fisher Farbman was inspired to craft a biopic around Dr. Evans (portrayed in the movie by Game of Thrones actress Natalie Dormer) after profiling the oncologist on Modern Hero, a series about women with extraordinary careers and influence. 'It was really the comments and shares of people whose life stories Audrey impacted,' Farbman recalls. 'They're alive because of her, went to medical school, stayed at a Ronald McDonald House … I just felt this overwhelming feeling that I was supposed to tell her story on film. So here we are, seven years later.' The scriptwriting process took around two year of intense research involving innumerable conversations with Dr. Evans (prior to her death in 2022 at the age of 97), other physicians, and families impacted by pediatric cancer. 'I approached the story with a lot of listening and trying to understand," Farbman explains. 'Trying to make sure we were being authentic to those people and not sugar coating their realities.' In addition, CHOP provided her access to a treasure trove of archival material comprising 'hundreds of documents." All of it greatly appealed to the producer/writer's journalistic background. 'When you do a true story, you have to put together a script annotation where you cite all your sources. I'm very proud of that important attention to detail, facts, and the truth. Otherwise, you lose the audience.' Audrey's Children director Ami Canaan Mann shared that commitment to detail, making the most of the film's modest budget (all of it raised independently by Farbman) to resurrect Philadelphia, circa 1969, without the use of any fabricated sets or extensive CG augmentation. 'Nobody necessarily wants to hear about kids with cancer for an hour-and-a-half,' the filmmaker says. 'But if you can seduce them into the world and do that through attention to detail and consistency of vision in terms of the visual aspects of the film, then at the end of an hour-and-a-half, it turns out that they have heard a story about kids with cancer.' The second core pillar of the biopic was being as true to the medical science as possible. As a result, the shoot made use of real nurses as background extras, as well as an on-set doctor consultant. 'I didn't want anybody who works in the medical profession to look at this movie and be like, 'Oh no, they didn't get the holding of the syringe right!'' Mann admits. They were ultimately successful on that front, with CHOP's oncology department giving the film its seal of approval after an advance screening. 'The greatest compliments they could give us were not only did we bring Audrey back to life as they remembered her, but we also nailed the medical world,' Farbman says. "The holistic approach that Audrey took to caring for her patients is very much the holistic approach that we took to the film. It was not just what was in the script, it was not just about what it looked like — it was the whole thing.' As Evans, Dormer brilliantly commands the screen, portraying the character as a profoundly empathetic caregiver who won't allow anything — least of all the male-dominated culture of the time period — to get in the way of trailblazing medical research that could save countless lives. 'She was a force of nature,' emphasizes Mann. In one particularly notable scene, Audrey jumps into a swimming pool fully clothed just to grab the attention of her dismissive superior, C. Everett Koop (The Penguin's Clancy Brown, who is a dead ringer for the actual man), CHOP's head of pediatric surgery at the time and future Surgeon General of the United States. 'Exactly what you see onscreen is who Audrey Evans was,' Farbman says. 'She was tenacious and funny with a very dry sense of humor. [She was also] laser-focused on her mission. If I could sum up Audrey, it's that she believed she was put here by God with a purpose to care for children and literally nothing got in her way, ever." To prepare for the titular role, Dormer had a number of conversations with the real Audrey and studied the doctor's voice and mannerisms ad nauseam. 'Before any scene, Natalie would listen to a recording, just to make sure she had [the accent down pat] 'Natalie was Audrey,' echoes Farbman. 'She brought her back to life.' Despite pushback on funding and resources from her superiors, Audrey gains a vital ally in Dr. Giulio John D'Angio (Westworld's Jimmi Simpson), whom she ended up marrying later in life. 'It's a very interesting love story, in that it's not a physicalized love story,' notes Mann. 'It's a love story about two people who fall in love with each other's intellect. She's such a force of nature, that you needed to have a male counterpart who could go toe-to-toe with her; someone who could be empathic towards and understand her, but not feel dominating or passive. There had to be a real balance. So it had to be somebody like Natalie, and it had to be somebody like Jimmi.' She continues: 'We went to CHOP with a lot with the actors and talked to people who worked with [Audrey] and knew her. We had the good fortune of being able to go to some of the labs where they're now doing bespoke cancer treatments. They're taking your particular cancer and designing treatments specifically to that cancer. It's just incredible. Then I turned my head and caught it, a picture of Dan and Audrey. They're very much the grandparents of that kind of continuation of research.' Even after retiring from the medical field in 2009, Dr. Evans never her joie de vivre. Farbman knows that better than anyone, having 'spent hundreds of hours together" with the oncologist. 'Just being around her and seeing how she lived her life was a beautiful experience,' the producer/writer concludes. 'She would stop and talk to other people's babies, she would give money to homeless people, she would stop and say hello to people just to make their day better. Seeing everything she had to overcome and how she was still that way in her 97th year on Earth, feeling like she still had work to do, [believing] Audrey's Children is now playing in theaters nationwide. Ben Chase, Julianne Layne, and Evelyn Giovine co-star. Click here for tickets!
