Invoke AI is a generative AI creation tool and model manager that empowers professionals, artists, and enthusiasts to generate and create visual media while retaining complete ownership of their work, models, and intellectual property. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Invoke AI founder and CEO Kent Keirsey to learn more about the company.
Kent Keirsey’s Background
Keirsey is an Atlanta-based business and product leader with B2B, B2C, and B2B2C experience across different verticals, including FinTech and Enterprise SaaS. Keirsey said:
“I’ve always been playing with the latest in technology. A computer nerd and amateur digital creative since childhood, I’ve also been an avid gamer, tabletop board gamer, and reader. I’ve always enjoyed creating, which is probably why the problem around Invoke called to me.”
Formation Of Invoke AI
How did the idea for Invoke AI come together? Keirsey shared:
“Well, to talk about the company, we have to first talk about the origins of Invoke. Before it was Invoke, our project started as a small command-line script that was released at the same time as the Stable Diffusion model by Dr. Lincoln Stein, a cancer researcher who found himself fascinated by the emerging technology. I was one of the earliest contributors to that project and helped build the community, manage the product side of things, and market it through various channels. With a path to a solid product and professional-grade tool, I saw the potential for an Enterprise business that could build and sustain the open-source project, helping to realize a goal our entire team had of making good software accessible to all.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Keirsey’s favorite memory working for the company so far? Keirsey reflected:
“I remember each time my team members have said that this is the most fun they’d ever had working on a product. It always happens when some ground-breaking new feature gets added, like our recent addition of Tencent’s Image Prompt Adapter research that enables image generation prompted by an image rather than text.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Keirsey explained:
“Our technology unleashes creativity, starting with our core product, Invoke Studio, a powerful 2D asset creation tool and diffusion-based AI model manager. The Studio includes a Workflow Builder that allows for creating automated image generation pipelines, a Teams Dashboard for collaborating and organizing around projects together, and a permissively licensed open-source infrastructure that gives our customers complete ownership of their own AI models.”
Challenges Faced
After asking Keirsey about bottlenecks associated with the industry, he acknowledged:
“The main bottleneck is a lack of clarity around copyright law from the U.S. Copyright Office. As AI tools can generate unique content, the ambiguity in copyright law raises questions about ownership and rights over generated material.”
“Without clarity on how generations from these tools can be legally protected and how training will be regulated in a way that supports innovation, there is hesitation by users on adopting these tools. However, we’re confident that these uncertainties will clear up and that human-authored works created with the assistance of AI will receive copyright protection.”
Evolution Of Invoke AI’s Technology
How has the Invoke AI’s technology evolved since launching? Keirsey noted:
“Since launching, our platform has seen vast improvements in granting creatives the fine-tuned control they need in generating images. One notable improvement is how we empower creative professionals to pass in sketches or rendered images to Invoke and have the AI model assist in completing the sketch in their style. We’ve also built an enterprise-grade productivity workflow that connects creative teams using the tool together, and provides the ability for custom model management and utilization.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Keirsey cited:
“Achieving more than 10,000 GitHub stars in six months and nearing 20,000 in just over a year, growing a Discord community of 20,000, reaching over 100,000 downloads of our open source, raising our seed funding round, and securing pilots with some of the world’s largest gaming studios and brands.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Keirsey assessed:
“While it’s challenging to pin down an exact TAM due to the rapid evolution of AI, we are confident that with the continuous transformation of media creation, our potential market reach is expansive. I expect a renaissance in creativity with AI that will empower creative professionals like artists, game designers, architects, graphic and product designers.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Keirsey affirmed:
“Our differentiation lies in our open source core. We empower our customers by deploying models based on open-licensed foundations rather than a proprietary system, which gives them unrivaled flexibility, control, and scalability of their generative AI infrastructure.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Keirsey concluded:
“One of our objectives is to provide new tools and resources to artists that help them monetize their work while protecting their intellectual property in this new generative AI era. Another is to work with enterprises on optimizing their models while leveraging AI.”
