Runway, a company whose AI makes and edits video, images and sound, launched App Studio on Oct. 26. Someone types what they want a tool to do, and App Studio writes the app, tests it and gets it ready to use, with no code to write. The apps it builds make images, video and audio with Runway's AI, and can follow a company's own brand style saved in its Runway account.
Runway's case is that AI has already let millions of people make software just by asking, but that shift has not yet reached creative work. Inside many teams, it says, the know-how for getting a good result lives in one person's prompts, the instructions they type into an AI tool, and in their settings. App Studio is meant to turn that know-how into an app the whole team can run.
Runway is starting with ready-made apps of its own, such as one that, Runway says, can put a new character into a video and one that sets a camera's position and movement in 3D space for planning shots. Runway says the architecture firm KPF, one of the companies that tried it early, built an app where designers mark what should move in a still picture of a building design, draw a camera path and get back a video. Runway's launch video also shows a playful app called Gravity Garden that lets a person set the gravity and weather of a small floating world.
App Studio comes with every paid Runway plan, the cheapest of which costs $12 a month when billed yearly, and building and running apps uses up credits, the units Runway users spend each time they make an image, a video or a sound. Each app stays private to the person who made it until they share it. Paid users can also publish a public link, and anyone with a Runway account can then sign in and use the app, paying with their own credits. Free users can use Runway's own apps and ones shared with them.
Every example so far comes from Runway and its early partners. Runway hasn't said how many credits a typical app takes to build, and how well App Studio handles ordinary people's requests will be clearer once more of them try it.