Pika, a company that makes AI video tools, released Pika H3 Flex on Oct. 29. It is an AI model that turns a typed description, a picture or a set of reference images, clips and sounds into a short video that comes with its own sound: voices, music, sound effects and background noise. Pika built it from H3, a video model made by the AI company MiniMax, and gave it extra training to make it faster and easier to steer.
Pika says it built the model for people who make videos for a living and rarely keep their first try. A creator can try out ideas quickly in less detail, then finish the version they like in much sharper detail. They can guide it with several references at once, such as a sketch, a photo, a voice sample or a clip of the movement they want, and change a finished clip, swapping a character, an outfit or the camera move, without starting over. Through Pika's paid service, the sound can also come back as separate tracks for voices, music, effects, everyday noises and background, so an editor can turn the music down without losing the conversation.
The samples Pika published include a fast table-tennis rally in a drained swimming pool and a 1990s-style sitcom scene in which a dog eats a birthday cake while a studio audience laughs. Pika calls them showcases and says people running the free download may not get exactly the same results.
Pika says the model is fast: at draft quality, it can make the main part of a short clip in seconds in its own tests, though the company notes that the full wait is longer. People can use it now through Pika's pay-per-use service for developers, which gives members some free videos each day during the launch, and Pika says the model comes to the company's own creative app on Nov. 2.
Pika has published the model's trained files, so anyone can download it and run it on their own computers, though the download comes under the terms of MiniMax's license for H3. The free version does less than the paid service: it makes video only in less detail, without the sharper finish or the separate sound tracks, and Pika says it may run slower than on Pika's own service. Pika tested it on a powerful data-center chip.
Most of what Pika says about speed and quality comes from its own tests. An outside ranking that pits videos against each other in head-to-head matchups puts it seventh, above the MiniMax model it was built from, but on far fewer matchups than the models around it, so Pika's spot could still move. How well the free version runs on less powerful machines is not yet clear.