An example of an image generated by the Magicsnap tool
As the use of GenAI tools becomes more widespread, with its potential to be used in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry, Myanmar-based startup Base Technology is making waves with its generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) solution Magicsnap.
This technology aims to transform consumer engagement and create personalised experiences that set brands apart in an increasingly competitive market.
Swan Htet Aung, Managing Director of Base Technology, in an email interview with e27, sheds light on the company’s mission, stating, “Consumer engagement is getting more challenging and expensive, as brands compete for a share of consumers’ attention in an increasingly fragmented world. To achieve top-of-mind brand recall, marketers are turning to GenAI. GenAI technology’s ability to generate content from simple text prompts and other visuals enables marketers to deliver new consumer experiences.”
According to Gartner, 63 per cent of marketing leaders plan to invest in GenAI in the next 24 months, and Base Technology aims to be at the forefront of this trend. Their flagship product Magicsnap is a GenAI-powered solution that allows customers to generate AI avatars from a single selfie effortlessly. This technology goes beyond basic online interactions, turning customers into brand ambassadors in different virtual worlds, such as historical, anime, and Hollywood settings.
What sets Magicsnap apart is its unique training dataset. Unlike other image AI models trained with generic stock footage, the company said that Magicsnap’s image AI model was trained with 200,000 images from Southeast Asia (SEA).
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This approach enables the system to identify cultural nuances, including traditional outfits and facial features, making it culturally representative and sensitive to end-consumers. Magicsnap has generated around 100,000 traditional outfits for 40,000 people, demonstrating its ability to cater to diverse cultural preferences.
Aung shares an example of a successful campaign where customers could leverage Magicsnap to select a suitable traditional outfit based on their facial features and the nature of the event they intended to attend. The GenAI model successfully matched customers with Burmese and Cambodian traditional outfits, bringing delight to the clients’ customers and showcasing the technology’s versatility.
Since its launch in 2016, Base Technology has developed two successful products – Expa.AI, a large language model for building chatbots, and Magicsnap. The company has empowered over 1,000 small businesses and more than 30 enterprises in SEA, engaging more than four million customers through 100 million conversations.
Aung states, “This generates billions of data points, and we are working to migrate our data to AWS to leverage AWS’s broad portfolio of storage solutions for its reliability, security, and performance.”
Magicsnap alone has generated more than US$40,000 in revenue within the first two months of its launch in July 2023. Aung notes the cost efficiency achieved since migrating to AWS and mentions ongoing collaborations with brands in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.
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Base Technology’s collaboration with AWS has been instrumental in their success. Aung how AWS SageMaker has enabled faster fine-tuning of diffusion models by 30 per cent and reduced the cost of inference by 40 per cent. This efficiency allows Base Technology to bring solutions to market swiftly and cost-effectively.
The company also benefited from the AWS GenAI Reactor program, receiving AWS credits and mentorship on generative AI from industry experts.
Looking ahead, Base Technology aims to roll out the first-ever multimodal model trained with major SEA languages in 2024.
Aung emphasises the importance of supporting local languages for businesses in the region, stating, “For domestic companies building GenAI applications for their business in SEA, an English-only multimodal model wouldn’t help to give them the right head start. Businesses cannot use one model for all.”
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Image Credit: Base Technology / Magicsnap
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