Mae Cornes
Photo credit: Beau Nelson
For decades, Silicon Valley has held the spotlight as the go-to destination for technology startups and venture capital. When AI took center stage last year, and the power quickly consolidated into a few behemoths, it looked like creativity would be taken down with it. AI is remarkable at writing, concepting, creating photographs, and producing videos, so it seemed only natural that creativity would get swallowed up by the Bay Area.
That is, until now. A new AI-driven venture studio has landed in Los Angeles with the mission to build the brands of the future but with a radically new tool kit. Recognizing that LA exists at the intersection of technology, creativity, and capital, Super Vision Studio saw an opportunity to shift the narrative about AI to the southland. So they quickly set about building a studio to write the future of AI-accelerated creativity by harnessing LA’s unrivaled potential.
“Creativity moves differently in Los Angeles,” claims Eze Blaine, CCO and co-founder of Super Vision “We’ve always had Hollywood, but LA is also the beating heart of advertising, e-commerce, apparel, high art, street art, you name it. LA has a history of taking the latest tools and technologies and turning them into the latest trends.”
Future Brands
Photo credit: Beau Nelson
The Super Vision thesis is to build and deploy what it calls “Future Brands”, companies with two core characteristics: 1) AI is woven into the brands’ DNA at every step of its development, and 2) The products and experiences have some curious attribute that could not have existed pre-AI. In other words, it’s not about reverse engineering Gucci or Supreme with AI tools. It’s about seeing that AI creates totally new opportunities, features, and experiences for consumers. Companies that create or identify these opportunities will be the ones to write the future.
To secure a first-mover advantage, Super Vision developed a proprietary technology platform called Super Vision OS. This platform uses Multi-Agent Systems (AI personas like virtual CEO, CFO, or CMO that interact with each other to solve problems) that scour near-infinite compute spaces to identify weak profit and loss models where AI can deliver outsized optimizations. Greenlit brand ideas are granted a small amount of time and resources and, if successful, are formally launched.
The first brand to successfully spinoff from the studio – NeuThrone, an AI-accelerated luxury streetwear brand with its debut product being high-end sunglasses with built-in “Deepfake-Camouflage” that tricks AI Tools so they’re unable to copy human faces – is the perfect encapsulation of the Super Vision ethos: A product co-created with AI-tools, but with a curious feature that empowers creatives to protect their identity in the post-AI world.
Rewiring Creative Workflows
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“The conversation around AI is totally centered around replacing humans and rebuilding the same old SaaS companies but with AI tools, but we see that conversation as a dead end,” Shea explains. “Sure, AI replaces some tasks. However, it also dramatically increases the number of dimensions you can explore when making decisions. We use it to brainstorm thousands of business models, brand concepts, and marketing playbooks. It writes code, it creates CAD drawings, and creates music videos. But it can’t do anything without the mentorship of a smart human being. We talk about Super Vision as technology plus capital plus domain expertise. We talk about domain expertise as the new oil.”
“Every component of the e-commerce supply chain is here in Los Angeles,” Blaine continues. “Technologists, Creative Directors, Filmmakers, Manufacturers, Marketers, all this domain expertise down here is a crucial part of the formula for co-creating with AI.”
AI tools require humans with deep domain expertise to guide them. And they rarely solve problems end-to-end. New AI-driven workflows often require lots of back-and-forth between AI and traditional tools. You might use MidJourney to concept still images and then RunwayML to animate the still and switch camera angles. But then it needs to be pulled back into Adobe After Effects, back into AI upscaling tools, and then back into Adobe Premiere.
It’s the same things with concepting ideas, writing copy, creating CAD drawings, writing code, training machine learning models, and designing.
Folks with deep domain expertise in these fields will find their work 10x’d by AI tools. But without that domain expertise in the equation, the process falls apart. Cities that have traditionally outsourced this expertise to Los Angeles will struggle to develop healthy ecosystems to build the brands of the future.
The New World of Capital
Photo credit: Beau Nelson
Los Angeles has long been home to Silicon Beach, Ad Agencies, Hollywood, and a thriving hub of manufacturing, shipping, and logistics centered around the Ports of LA and Long Beach.
But it’s also home to a thriving investor ecosystem that includes traditional Venture Capital, ex-retail and e-commerce entrepreneurs that’ve graduated to become Angel Investors, and even Talent Agencies have jumped into investing. The diverse undercurrents of capital that surge through LA’s business landscape, make the city fertile ground for seeding visionary new projects.
This enables Super Vision to circumvent the stranglehold that Bay Area investors often have on the fundraising process.
What’s Next?
“When we first started shopping around the Super Vision concept, there was a deep-seated sentiment that AI was only going to impact digital products,” continues Shea. “Such as having AI send cold emails or create Facebook ad campaigns. It was a serious lack of imagination. We think AI makes creative folks more productive, and it allows them to explore more dimensions. More importantly, it upends all the workflows and toolkits that people use today. And that requires new thinking. So we just decided, we have to start with a show-don’t-tell model. Let’s start with the hardest, most analogue business, let’s start with an apparel brand. We pushed the idea through the SuperVision OS, and all of a sudden, it seemed like there were infinite possibilities. And it just took off from there.”
In addition to retail, the venture studio intends to tackle other industries such as CPG, print, entertainment, and education.
“Imagine using reinforcement learning to develop new flavors or foods,” adds Blaine. “Or using prompt interfaces to empower consumers to create products and experiences on the fly. Or giving people the tools to opt out of LLM databases and take ownership of their intellectual property and personal likenesses.”
Given the nascent state of AI, the studio is agnostic about which AI tools it uses. ChatGPT, MidJourney, StableDiffusion, AutoGen, Langchain, and Luma Dream Machine are all at the top of the list, as well as burgeoning techniques such as MultI Agent Systems, reinforcement learning, and the more mischievous tricks that NeuThrone uses to break AI technologies.
“Our fund is as much an investment in Los Angeles as it is in the future of brand innovation. LA’s blend of tech, creativity, and capital provides the fertile ground needed to build brands that resonate with modern consumers. We’re excited to contribute to the city’s role as a global innovation hub.” said Shea.
Super Vision has hinted at upcoming brand launches, as well as collaborations with rappers, documentary filmmakers, and conspiracy sleuths in what promises to be a series of groundbreaking launches. Interested consumers are encouraged to register on the Super Vision and NeuThrone websites.
About Super Vision Studio
Super Vision Studio is an AI-driven venture studio focused on creating “Future Brands”—innovative brands that merge Generative AI and Multi-Agent Systems with deep human intuition.
For more information, visit https://supervision.studio/ or contact Tim Shea at [email protected].
Contact Information:
- Name: Tim Shea
- Company: Super Vision Studio
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: https://supervision.studio/