On September 27, 2023, the technology realm experienced a momentous event with the emergence of Luda, a groundbreaking company striving to popularize Artificial Intelligence (AI). Luda empowers the general populace to construct, nurture, and deploy their unique AI entities, by integrating play into the learning process via an engaging sandbox experience.
Composed of seasoned experts from renowned organizations like Google Research, Disney, and Zynga, Luda has unveiled an unprecedented system for Real-Time Reinforcement Learning (RT-RL). This innovative system unlocks new realms of artistic expression and social interaction. Alongside this, the company has successfully secured $7 million in funding, orchestrated by BITKRAFT and Compound, and featuring notable contributors such as Jeff Dean and Illia Polosukhin, a co-author of the Transformers paper.
A New Creative Horizon: Mels
Luda has developed Mels, a pioneering browser-based simulator, providing a real-time platform for the generative AI to breathe life into abstract concepts. With this innovation, users can seamlessly construct AI entities, referred to as agents, using essential components within a virtual sandbox. These self-assembled characters are then invigorated by Luda’s RT-RL, following the laws of real-world physics, providing an array of interactive and unpredictable situations without the intricacies of coding or manual animation.
This avant-garde approach by Luda is reshaping the landscape of AI agent development through accelerated learning, significantly reducing the training duration from days to mere minutes. It also offers Low-Latency Inference, allowing these AI agents to operate on everyday consumer devices rather than being reliant on expensive server data centers, making interaction with agents instantaneous and user-friendly.
Empowering Human Creativity in AI
Vijay Sundaram, Luda’s Founder and CEO, emphasized, “At Luda, we believe people belong at the center of AI – not the other way around. That’s why we’re building UGC gameplay for the AI generation. The exciting thing about technology paradigm shifts is the chance to create fundamentally new experiences that weren’t possible before. We started researching and developing novel generative AI techniques like RT-RL five years ago in Google Research, to create a new consumer category: immersive, interactive AI agents anyone can create through an experience that’s as accessible and joyful as play – a new kind of playground bringing together human creativity, social connection, and user-generated agents.” He further shared the vision for Luda to be a convergence of human ingenuity, and user-generated agents, providing an experience that’s exhilarating and accessible.
Luda aims to provide a platform that goes beyond being just a game or intellectual property. It is shaping a new creative medium, allowing every user to construct their AI agents using Lego-like building blocks. This approach aligns with the revolutionary creativity and user-generated content witnessed in platforms like Minecraft and Roblox, positioning Luda as a harbinger of a new era of social and immersive experiences.
Changing the Consumer Interaction Landscape
Scott Rupp, a Partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, articulated his thoughts on Luda’s potential impact, “Luda’s generative AI breakthrough has the potential to transform how consumers interact with AI, and gameplay is the ideal use case. Luda isn’t just building an IP, game or platform, but developing an entirely new creative medium, one that empowers every user to truly craft AI agents through Lego-like building blocks. Just as Minecraft and Roblox ushered in a new era of active creativity and UGC, Luda is poised to introduce a fundamentally new category of social and immersive experiences, ”
Additionally, Michael Dempsey, Managing Partner at Compound, expressed his excitement about Luda’s advancements in creating intelligent agents that are scalable and customizable with negligible inference cost, enabling the construction of a unique AI company. “Luda’s breakthroughs in crafting custom, scalable, and physically intelligent agents with almost zero inference cost have enabled them to build a full-stack AI company unlike any other. We’ve known the team since they started their R&D at Google Research five years ago and they’ve since assembled one of the few AI labs with world-class researchers and creatives working shoulder to shoulder. We couldn’t be more excited for category-defining experiences like Mels that were never before possible,” said Dempsey.
Conclusion
In summary, Luda’s emergence marks the inception of an innovative approach to AI development, democratizing AI through playful learning and creative exploration. With its pioneering technologies, Luda is poised to redefine the realms of interactive and social experiences, opening doors to uncharted territories in AI and creative expression. The technological landscape keenly watches as Luda steps into a new epoch, merging human creativity with advanced AI, and crafting experiences that were previously deemed impossible.
