AI Creative Tools — State of Play (Aug 2025)

Modalities

Image

Generate & edit — photoreal + stylized.
Try: Midjourney, Ideogram (Character), Black Forest Labs / FLUX, Krea, OpenAI GPT Image

Video

Short clips with improving edit controls.
Try: Veo 3, Runway, Kling, MiniMax / Hailuo, Seedance, Luma, Higgsfield

3D

Objects and worlds you can explore + interact with.
Try: Hunyuan 3D, Meshy, Genie 3, World Labs, Odyssey, Dynamics Lab Mirage, Decart

Audio

Speech, sound effects, and music.
Try: ElevenLabs, Udio, Suno, Cartesia, Riffusion

Characters

Image + video + audio combined into talking/moving characters.
Try: Hedra, Runway, HeyGen, Captions, Viggle, Arcads

Image generation

Midjourney — consistent, beloved aesthetics.
Krea × Black Forest Labs — nails photorealism with FLUX models.
OpenAI GPT Image — strong at accurate text-in-image.

Consistency (set characters/objects across shots)

Ideogram Character — define from one photo, reuse anywhere.
FLUX Kontext + LoRA/open weights — tune styles/characters for control. (link where clear)

Image editing

Prompted restyles, object swaps, targeted local edits, multi‑image fusion.
FLUX Kontext — reframe, novel views, “show other angles”. (link where clear)
Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (“nano‑banana”) — multi‑step edits, consistency, multi‑image refs.

Video: generation

Veo 3 — text→video & image→video with native audio; top‑tier physics & prompt following (8s in Gemini app).
Also: Hailuo 02, Seedance Pro, Luma, Kling, Higgsfield

Video: editing

Runway Aleph — restyle, swap objects/characters, novel camera angles on existing footage.
VACE + Wan — local/longer‑clip re‑renders; outfit/character/environment swaps. (link where clear)

3D

Object / character generation

Hunyuan 3D — image→3D, text→3D.
Meshy — fast Text‑to‑3D and animations.

World generation

Genie 3 — real‑time interactive worlds (1‑minute memory in current previews).
“True 3D” persistent worlds: World Labs, Odyssey, Dynamics Lab Mirage, Decart / Oasis.

Audio

Speech

ElevenLabs — granular control (pauses, laughter, tone), fast cloning.
Cartesia — ultra‑low latency voice models (Sonic/Ink/Line).

Music

Udio — full‑stack AI music creation & editing.
Suno — song generation from text.
Riffusion — generative instrument; remix/edit.

Characters

Speech (make a character talk)

Hedra — image + audio → expressive talking video.
Sync Labs — lipsync any video with new audio (API).

Motion (make a character move)

Viggle — video‑to‑video character swaps & physics‑aware motion.
Cartwheel — multi‑part motions on 3D character rigs.

Creative studios (done‑for‑you)

Genre (PJ Accetturo) — viral spots and narrative ads.
Promise Studios — Dave Clark & team building AI‑native films.
The Dor Brothers — music videos, commercials, films.
Wonder Studio → Autodesk Flow Studio — AI VFX toolset.

a16z Creative Portfolio (sample)

Logos shown in deck — here as links where clear.

Credit & Contact

Credit: Justine Moore of a16z (August 2025). Source: “AI Creative Tools: State of Play”. • OG Canva presentation

Contact — X: @venturetwins • Email: jmoore@a16z.com

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