Simplified Adds AI Image Generator
Another marketing platform adds image creator. It's a trend.
Simplified positions itself as “a design collaboration platform for modern marketing teams.” Templates are part of the feature set along with generative AI text-to-x solutions. You might think of Simplified as a cross between Canva and Jasper AI.
Like Jasper AI, Simplified has a text-to-text generator that enables users to quickly generate ad copy, social media posts, blog articles, and Amazon product listings. Like Canva, it offers templates and design tools to create marketing assets. The company just announced it is adding a text-to-image generation service based on DALL-E and Stable Diffusion models to enable AI image generation. No one should be surprised.
Text-To-X Feature March
We have written recently about Canva and Picscart adding text-to-image generation as a new feature for their design collaboration tools. It appears that integrating this feature will quickly become expected by users. This follows the feature-over-product orientation of text-to-image adoption growth at the moment.
Users will still have the option to go directly to a text-to-image generator such as OpenAI’s DALL-E, Stability AI, or Midjourney and bring the creation back into solutions like Simplified. But, it will be more convenient for all but AI image generation power users to just do it within their marketing design suite. The same might be said about stock images. More on that is below.
Jasper AI came to market with text-to-text solutions built around OpenAI’s GPT-3. The company recently added text-to-image generation using DALL-E to expand the features offered to its mostly corporate marketing user base. Simplified also offered a GPT-3 text-to-text solution from the outset. However, it also focused on automating a broader set of marketing activities. That is where the Canva comparison comes in.
Adding image generation technology is a logical extension for Simplified. It is one more feature that can meet a daily marketing activity need. You could easily imagine Jasper AI pursuing expansion into design tools to compete more effectively in this larger market segment. Its $125 million funding round could be applied to rapid feature expansion beyond generative AI solutions.
Automation. Automation. Automa….
My presentation on the 6 Segments of Synthetic Media at the Synthedia conference in September identified the twin value propositions of hyper-automation and hyper-creation as the drivers of industry adoption. Simplified has an automation focus around marketing asset creation, and that may be the special insight that helps drive even faster growth and differentiate it from giants such as Canva and Picsart.
Based on the 150,000 user figure that Simplified revealed after its December 2021 funding round, it is still about three orders of magnitude smaller than Picscart. However, providing tools alone is different than automation. Automation brings added operational benefits and becomes harder to dislodge from an organization.
Who is Getting Disrupted First?
Stock image providers may soon be facing an existential crisis. Even if they do add text-to-image generation options, what is the rationale for marketers to go to another website to purchase an image when they can get something as good or better as a free feature of their design suite? Stock image websites are not about automation or efficiency. They are about access to assets. That access is no longer a scarcity.
Guess what Simplified CEO KD Deshpande told Voicebot in an interview earlier today? Voicebot’s Eric Schwartz writes:
Despande sees Simplified using its synthetic media technology to take the role, and revenue, of stock photo services as more companies turn to AI to produce their art. The content produced by the synthetic media generators is owned by the clients that input the prompts and they can use it as they wish. They’ll also have the opportunity to sell the images to others through a marketplace Despande said Simplified will manage.
The other disruption will soon take place in marketing departments. Cycle times for projects will decline, and the skills required of creatives in the marketing department will change. If you are a marketer, it’s time to learn how to craft an elegant prompt. If you are a stock photo service, it’s time to pivot.
