Flora 正在为创意专业人士构建一个由 AI 驱动的 “无限画布”。只需几句话，AI 模型就可以被提示创建一个故事、一幅图像，甚至是一部短片。但根据 Weber Wong 的说法，这些模型都是 “由非创意人士为其他非创意人士制造的，以让他们感觉自己有创意。” 换句话说，它们并不是为真正的创意专业人士而设计的。这是 Wong 希望通过 Flora 改变的地方，Flora 是一家他创立并担任 CEO 的新创公司。Flora 本周推出，并附有一份宣言，声明 “AI 创意工具应该不仅仅是玩具
Flora, a new startup founded by Weber Wong, aims to revolutionize AI tools for creative professionals. Unlike existing generative AI models, which Wong criticizes as being designed for non-creatives, Flora offers an 'infinite canvas' that integrates with these models, providing a user-friendly interface for generating text, images, and videos. Initially targeting visual design agencies, Flora seeks to enhance creative workflows, allowing designers to produce significantly more variations of their work. Wong's vision is to empower artists with intuitive tools that foster creativity rather than hinder it.
With just a few words, AI models can be prompted to create a story, an image, or even a short film. But according to Weber Wong, these models are all “made by non-creatives for other non-creatives to feel creative.”
In other words, they’re not built for actual creative professionals. That’s something Wong is hoping to change with Flora, a new startup where he’s founder and CEO.
Flora launched this week, complete with a manifesto declaring that “AI creative tools should be more than toys for generating AI slop” and describing Wong and his team as “obsessed with building a power tool that will profoundly shape the future of creative work.”
The manifesto positions Flora as something different from existing AI tools, which “make it easy to create, but lack creative control,” and from existing creative software, which gives users "control, but are unintuitive & time-consuming.”
Flora isn’t trying to build better generative AI models. Wong argued that one of the startup’s key insights is that “models are not creative tools.” So instead, Flora offers an “infinite canvas” that integrates with existing models — it's a visual interface where users can generate blocks of text, images, and video.
“The model does not matter, the technology does not matter,” Wong told me “It’s about the interface.”
For example, a user could start by prompting Flora to create an image of a flower, then ask for details about the image, with those details leading to more prompts and varied images, with each step and variation mapped out on the aforementioned canvas, which can also be shared for collaborative work with clients.
Wong told me he wants Flora to be useful to any and all artists and creatives, but the company is initially focused on working with visual design agencies. In fact, it’s iterating on the product with feedback from designers at famed agency Pentagram.
The goal, Wong said, is to allow a designer at Pentagram to “just do 100X more creative work,” say by creating a logo design and then quickly generating 100 variations. He compared it to the evolution of musical composition — where Mozart “needed an entire orchestra to play his music,” a musician can get it all done “from his garage in New Jersey with Ableton, making it himself and posting it on SoundCloud.”
Wong has a background in both art and technology himself, having worked as an investor at Menlo Ventures but leaving when he realized, “I was not the person I’d back.” Determined to become the kind of founder worth investing in, he eventually joined New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, a graduate program focused on using technology to create art.
