Hi Creatives! 👋 

In this week's newsletter, we explore recent developments at the intersection of AI, creativity, and ethical content generation. Featured are insights and practical updates from Freepik, Nvidia, Midjourney, and others, illustrating how innovative tools

This Week’s Highlights:

• 🌟Project Odyssey Season 2 Wrap-up

• 🎬 Natasha Lyonne’s Uncanny Valley: Indie Cinema Meets Ethical AI

• 🎨 From 3D to AI: Nvidia's New Blueprint for Creatives

• 🎉 Freepik’s F Lite: Where Creativity Meets Ethical AI

• 🚀Freepik's New Audiovisual Generative Service

• 🎨 Midjourney’s Omni-Reference: Your AI Art Just Got a Whole Lot Smarter

• 🚀 Star Wars Goes AI

• ✨Camper Spotlight

Upscale Conf 2025

Excited to attend @Upscale Conf in SF this month — a gathering of creatives, builders, and curious minds across AI, design, and tech.

If you're considering going, I have a 50% discount code (limited tickets available). Just use UPSCALECLAIREXUE50 .

Project Odyssey Season 2 Wrap up🌟

Matty Shimura just dropped something special—the full Season 2 report of the Project Odyssey AI Film Competition! We are excited to share insights into how AI filmmaking is shaping up and where we're headed next.

🔍 Report Highlights:

• 📌 The ultimate Top 50 AI filmmaking tools every creative needs to bookmark.

• ⏳ Real numbers on how AI filmmakers are investing their time and budgets.

• 🔮 Insightful predictions on the ongoing battle between Closed vs. Open Source AI.

👉 Check out Matty's original post here: View on LinkedIn

🎬 Natasha Lyonne’s Uncanny Valley: Indie Cinema Meets Ethical AI

Dianne Wiest and Diane Keaton cruising together through The Matrix—that’s Natasha Lyonne’s quirky pitch for her directorial debut, Uncanny Valley. 🎥✨

🎮 The Story: When Reality Gets a Digital Twist

Co-written by Brit Marling (The OA), Uncanny Valley tells the story of a teenage girl whose world is flipped upside down by an insanely popular virtual reality game. As she dives deeper into this "parallel present," the boundary between virtual and real life starts to blur—raising fascinating questions about connection and identity in the digital age.

🧠 Meet "Marey": The Ethical AI Collaborator

Here's the twist—Uncanny Valley integrates visuals generated by an AI called "Marey," developed by Moonvalley. Unlike many other AI models, Marey is exclusively trained on properly licensed content, directly addressing creative industry concerns around intellectual property and ethical AI usage

🎭 A Creative Dream Team

Natasha Lyonne and Brit Marling aren't alone on this groundbreaking project. Jaron Lanier, one of the founding figures of virtual reality and a strong voice for human-first tech, is involved, signaling a thoughtful exploration of AI's role in filmmaking without compromising artistic authenticity

Read more details here.

🎨 From 3D to AI: Nvidia's New Blueprint for Creatives

Nvidia has unveiled the AI Blueprint for 3D-guided generative AI, a groundbreaking tool that bridges the gap between 3D modeling and AI image generation. By integrating Blender's 3D modeling capabilities with Black Forest Lab's FLUX.1 image generator, this tool allows you to craft basic 3D scenes—think buildings, trees, or vehicles—and convert them into detailed 2D images. It's like setting the stage in 3D and letting AI paint the picture! 🖌️

• Enhanced Control: Instead of relying solely on text prompts, you can design the layout, camera angles, and object placements in 3D, giving you more precision in your final image.

• Time Efficiency: No more endless tweaking of text descriptions. A rough 3D sketch is all you need to guide the AI.

• Creative Freedom: Whether you're visualizing a futuristic cityscape or a serene forest, this tool lets your imagination run wild, with AI bringing your vision to life.

Getting Started

Ready to dive in? Here's what you need:

• A computer equipped with an Nvidia RTX 4080 GPU or higher.

• Blender for 3D modeling.

• Access to Black Forest Lab's FLUX.1 image generator.

Nvidia provides detailed documentation, sample assets, and a preconfigured environment to help you get started. You can download the AI Blueprint here

Source: The Verge

🎉 Freepik’s F Lite: Where Creativity Meets Ethical AI

Freepik just dropped something special for creators like us: F Lite, a fresh, open-source AI image generator trained exclusively on licensed, safe-for-work imagery. Yep, no more second-guessing copyrights!

🔥 Why F Lite is a Big Deal:

• Ethical Image Generation 🕊️
  Built responsibly in collaboration with AI startup Fal.ai, F Lite used a huge dataset of 80 million licensed images, meaning it's fully respectful of other artists' rights (TechCrunch).

• Two Fun Modes for Creativity 🎨

  • Standard Mode – for accurate, straightforward prompts.

  • Texture Mode – to spice things up with richer textures and unexpected visual delights!

• Open and Customizable ⚙️
  F Lite is open for everyone, inviting creators and developers alike to adapt it to their own creative needs and visions.

👉 Learn more and explore F Lite here

Freepik's New Audiovisual Generative Service 🚀

Freepik has officially launched an innovative generative AI service designed specifically for large corporations to craft striking audiovisual media. Think high-quality videos, eye-catching graphics, and seamless animations—all created effortlessly with AI. 🤖✨

This means as creatives, your brand storytelling and visual strategies can scale to new heights, faster and smarter. More time to ideate and less time fiddling around with technical details—win-win!

Why should you care? Easy:

• ⚡ Faster Production: Cut down on time-consuming tasks and streamline your creative process.

• 🎨 Consistent Quality: Deliver uniform, professional-quality visuals across all platforms.

• 🌍 Scalable Solutions: Perfect for teams looking to produce high volumes of customized content quickly.

Ready to check it out or learn more? Dive into the full story here.

🎨 Midjourney’s Omni-Reference: Your AI Art Just Got a Whole Lot Smarter

Think of Omni-Reference as telling Midjourney, “Put THIS in my image.” Whether it's a character, object, vehicle, or even a non-human creature, Omni-Reference allows you to embed specific elements from a reference image directly into your AI-generated artwork. This means you can maintain consistency and specificity like never before.

⚙️ How Does It Work?

On the Web Interface:

1. Update to Model V7: Ensure your settings are set to version 7.

2. Upload Your Reference Image: Click the image icon in the Imagine bar to upload or select your reference image.

3. Drag into Omni-Reference Bin: Drop your image into the 'Omni-Reference' section.

4. Adjust Omni-Weight: Use the slider to control how strongly the reference influences the output.

On Discord:

1. Use the --oref Parameter: Add --oref [image URL] to your prompt.

2. Set the Omni-Weight (--ow): Control the influence strength by setting a value between 1 and 1000 (default is 100).

Tips for Maximizing Omni-Reference

• Combine with Detailed Prompts: While the reference image guides the AI, your text prompt adds context and detail.

• Experiment with Styles: Use lower --ow values for style transformations, and higher values to preserve specific features.

• Single Reference Image: Currently, only one reference image can be used per prompt.

• Be Mindful of GPU Usage: Omni-Reference consumes double the GPU time compared to standard V7 renders.

Star Wars Goes AI 🌌

Disney and Lucasfilm just ventured into uncharted creative territory with their first-ever generative AI project—and it’s pretty epic. Aditya Rao shared how Rob Bredow, SVP at Lucasfilm, showcased a two-week AI-driven filmmaking experiment in his recent TED Talk. They envisioned a probe droid exploring a completely new Star Wars planet, essentially creating a "moving moodboard" to spark early-stage creative decisions.

✨ Why this is exciting:
GenAI is opening doors for a totally new type of creative talent—artists who blend directorial vision with technical skills, crafting visual stories like coders.

🎬 Tools Used: Generative AI (specific tools undisclosed by Lucasfilm)

👤 Shared by: Aditya Rao

👉 Check out the original LinkedIn post here

✨ C.A.S.H. Camp

The C.A.S.H. Camp experience just got even better. 🚀We’re introducing brand-new, hands-on modules featuring cutting-edge AI tools from Freepik and Midjourney—

Spots are limited, and the next cohort kicks off June 3rd!

Here’s what you’ll master:
✅ Seamlessly blend your products into AI-generated backdrops
✅ Add lifelike motion to your visuals using AI
✅ Create scroll-stopping, dynamic product videos

If you’re ready to boost your visual strategy and craft content that truly moves, now’s the time to join.
Secure your spot for the June cohort and future-proof your creative skill. 🚀

Industry Insights
Current industry trends demonstrate a notable shift towards ethical AI practices and patent-conscious development. Recent tools like Freepik’s F Lite and Moonvalley’s Marey illustrate a growing emphasis on legally sound, ethically trained AI models. Nvidia’s new blueprint underscores the increasing integration between traditional creative methods and advanced generative technologies, significantly enhancing workflow efficiency. Concurrently, projects like Lucasfilm’s recent AI exploration and Natasha Lyonne’s indie film highlight AI’s potential to redefine creative roles, underscoring a future of collaborative creativity rather than automated replacement. Understanding these shifts is valuable for creators aiming to navigate and leverage AI responsibly within their workflows.

That is for this week, folks.