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Sued by ByteDance 8000000's Tian Keyu unveils startup plan: 200000 visual symbols to reduce video costs 90%Beating News AI flash update: Former ByteDance intern Tian Keyu has disclosed his startup plan for a world model. His team has raised nearly from institutions including 5Y Capital and IDG Capital, 30000000 USD at a post-money valuation of 200000000 USD. The team currently has about 10 people and has not yet publicly released a product. World models aim to enable AI to learn how objects move and change in the real world, with applications in video generation, robotics, and other fields.
Tian Keyu was the first author of the Best Paper at NeurIPS 2024 and previously researched how to enable AI to generate images progressively from coarse to fine. Building on this direction, the new team designed for video a “vocabulary” containing 200000 visual symbols. These symbols function similarly to the Token used by language models to process text, enabling AI to process video in a more computationally suitable way. The team plans to train its model on 100000000 hours of video.
Tian Keyu said this approach could reduce the cost of generating each second of video to one-tenth of current levels or even lower. The team plans to first release a public demonstration and release the full model in 2027.
He also acknowledged to Bloomberg that he had shut down another intern's program, claiming it was to free up computing capacity for other researchers, and admitted that the action was inappropriate. ByteDance dismissed him in 2024 and subsequently sued for 8000000 yuan in damages. A judgment reviewed by Bloomberg shows that the court ordered Tian Keyu to pay 500000 yuan for breach of contract.
Original link https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/370708