Why is the ugly and tacky Clay AI so popular?

Recently, an AI photo editing software called Remini has become popular on social platforms with its unique clay filter style, sparking the curiosity and sharing of a large number of users. This "ugly and cute" visual effect not only breaks the boundaries of traditional beauty filters, but also inspires people's creativity and interaction. The article explores in depth the reasons for the popularity of clay AI filters, analyzes why AI image software always becomes the focus, and discusses key issues such as the market potential of such products and users' willingness to pay.

Recently, a large number of "clay" style character photos have appeared online. Especially on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and WeChat Moments, the number of shares of this type has increased sharply, with a strong "Shaun the Sheep" style.

Most of these photos come from a mobile app called Remini. This is an AI photo editing software. Users upload photos, select filter styles (such as clay style), and the photos are generated. The process is very simple, just add a filter to the photo.

However, this filter is quite special. It does not beautify the face. On the contrary, the photos it generates are a bit ugly, or more accurately, "ugly and cute". But it is this unique style that has attracted many netizens and has led to a large number of shares and spreads.

With the support of AI big models, image-related software has more diverse ways to play. Previously, the Miaoya Camera, which focused on AI photo taking, was popular for a while, and now, it is not surprising that the Clay AI filter is popular.

It is worth exploring why AI image software is always popular? How long will Clay AI be popular?

1. How did the ugly and cute clay filter become popular?

Ugly and cute, that's how many people describe the clay filter. This style of photo is not only different from the regular beauty filter, but it even makes people look "ghastly" and a little eerie. As shown below:

Image source: Xiaobaiski

However, it is this unconventional and contrasting effect that arouses people's curiosity and desire to share.

The May Day holiday is the peak travel season, and people post various check-in photos on social platforms. If you add a clay filter, you can save the trouble of beautification and photo editing, and also gain more attention and likes because of your unique style.

For this reason, clay filters became popular during the May Day holiday.

From the beginning, the clay filter was not for beautification, but for a certain degree of fun. So soon, all kinds of emoticons and movie stills were targeted.

A set of photos that was widely circulated during the holiday were clay versions of stills from The Legend of Zhen Huan.

Image source/Internet and related emoticons.

Image source: Feng Qianduo

At first glance at the picture, I thought it was an animated version of "Empresses in the Palace".

These photos, which were already very recognizable on the Internet, were transformed and re-circulated through clay filters, attracting more people to experience them. After some bloggers posted, many people in the comment section asked how to play, and related guides were spontaneously created.

Subsequently, more emojis and stills were added with clay filters.

Image source: Polaris

Image source: Pistachio Tree

Netizens spontaneously created a "clay world" where photos in the real world were ruined.

A user who followed the trend and tried the Remini clay filter summarized the "fixed focus": This filter handles details well. For example, when the clay filter is selected, in addition to the face, the clothes, the patterns on the clothes, the bookshelves, toys, tables and chairs in the background are all transformed into clay styles, and the picture is more harmonious. In addition, it will make some associations based on the scene in the picture, which is quite intelligent. This user uploaded a picture of her holding a balloon at the beach, and the generated photo added two seagulls in the background, and the balloon was transformed into the shape of a small fish.

Remini is a foreign software. Currently, it is only available in the iOS App Store in China. Apple phones can download and use it, while Android users can only "seek help" from others. Some Android users, driven by curiosity, leave messages under bloggers' posts and send their own photos, asking bloggers to help add clay filters. On Xiaohongshu, under many posts related to clay filters, the comment area shows a "relay" phenomenon.

Some people also post paid customized links on second-hand trading platforms such as Xianyu, with prices ranging from 1 yuan to more than ten yuan per link.

The "limited supply" scene aroused the curiosity of netizens and accelerated the spread of clay filters. In the Apple App Store free list, Remini ranked first for several consecutive days.

But since it is generated by AI, it is inevitable that it will "crash".

Image source: Melancholy Goose

Unstable output and local generation errors are common problems for all large AI models. For example, in this picture, the brim of the hat and the eyes are misaligned.

2. Will it be a flash in the pan?

Remini is a paid software, with a weekly subscription of 68 yuan, and new users have a 7-day free trial period. Under this wave of screen-sweeping popularity, many users start the trial with the mentality of trying something new, and then cancel the subscription immediately. This way, they can use it for free for 7 days and avoid automatic deduction after the expiration.

The price of 68 yuan a week is not cheap. In comparison, the membership of ChatGPT is 20 US dollars/month, which is equivalent to 34 yuan/week. Remini's price is twice that of ChatGPT.

Many users who have tried Remini have made it clear that they will not pay after the trial period expires. "It's too expensive. I just want to try it out, so I don't care about paying," one user said.

There are many similar "freeloaders".

One user said that in order to experience the clay effects, she opened the Remini APP and did not see the free 7-day trial, and was directly charged a subscription fee of 68 yuan. She quickly contacted the back-end to apply for a refund, decisively canceled the subscription, and then turned off the automatic renewal in the settings.

Many AI practitioners have told Dingjiao that the weak willingness of users to pay for to-C AI products in China is a big challenge. "Everyone is used to 'free stuff', and 9.9 yuan is considered expensive," said an investor.

After the 7-day free trial period, how many people remain and continue to pay can more truly reflect Remini's attractiveness to domestic users.

If the clay filter is the only function, the 68 yuan weekly subscription price is indeed expensive. However, Remini's functions are far more than that, and even the fact that the clay filter function can be popular this time is unexpected.

Remini has been popular abroad for a long time. It was first known for repairing blurry and old photos. In the introduction of Apple App Store, it highlighted this function and used a moving dividing bar to compare the clarity of the photos before and after the repair as a product selling point.

Last year, Remini became a big hit overseas with its special features such as "See what your baby will look like in the future" and "AI aging filter", especially on the TikTok platform, where a large number of users forwarded AI-generated photos of their future children, making Remini quickly popular. Remini replaced META's Threads and ranked first in the US App Store, and remained at the top of the list for a week.

According to data from SimilarWeb as of January 2024, Remini ranked second on the web side, second only to ChatGPT, and fifth on the APP side on the list of "Top 50 Most Visited AI Products in the World".

Remini has become popular in China recently. In fact, it is a continuation of its popularity overseas. It did not appear out of thin air, but a new function was launched by a popular product, which made it popular again. It is also based on the previous market foundation that Remini has the confidence to charge a subscription fee of 68 yuan per week in China.

The technical principle of the clay filter is not complicated. Some industry insiders believe that with the help of the LoRA model and a certain number of clay-style photos, the style and characteristics of the model can be trained, and the process of generating the filter is equivalent to AI redrawing.

Previously, many large model applications were able to change the style of photos and generate more distinctive photos. For example, ChatGPT had GPTs that specifically generated photos in the style of The Simpsons.

Perhaps because the training materials for the clay filter are mostly from abroad, some people reported that the characters after adding the filter look particularly foreign. Then people found that Remini launched a porcelain doll filter (Jade), which was called "a special effect more suitable for Chinese babies" by some bloggers, which set off another wave of discussion.

Comparison of the Clay filter (top) and the Porcelain Doll filter (bottom)

Image source/ Meow Meow

From this, we can see that Remini is very sensitive to the market and its products are iterated very quickly. The reason why its subscription model is weekly rather than monthly is probably because the renewal feedback of weekly packages is faster, which is convenient for product iteration.

After Remini's clay filter became popular, Meitu also launched a similar feature and made it available for free, but the market opportunity had already been seized by Remini.

3. Can AI popular products be replicated in batches?

If we trace back further, Remini's predecessor was actually a product developed by a Chinese company.

Dagong Technology launched the "You and Me in the Past" APP in 2019, which uses AI technology to repair blurry photos and old photos. Its overseas version is Remini. These two versions have become popular products at home and abroad.

They became popular at the time because of their specific small functions. One of the most popular functions of "You and Me Back Then" was "Restored Childhood Photos of Celebrities". Those restored photos were widely circulated online, creating many topics and were loved by fans.

AI restored Brigitte Lin Source/ Internet

In 2022, Dagong Technology launched the digital human business and tried the live e-commerce scene. Remini was then sold to the Italian company Bending Spoons. Last year, Remini became popular overseas and this time it swept the domestic screen, which were all the results of Bending Spoons' operation.

A product that was launched five years ago was popular then, was popular in the middle, and is still popular today. This shows that it is not a coincidence.

Image tool software is a track that is easy to produce a hit, but it is difficult to maintain the popularity. Many investors have analyzed "fixed focus" and found that the life cycle of tool software is relatively short and it is highly replaceable. Not only is the business prospect weak, but the competitive barrier is also low. Face Meng and ZAO, which once dominated the screen, are also short-lived.

In this wave of AI big models, everyone is looking for hot AI applications. Remini's re-emergence has shown everyone the possibility of breaking through the limitations of product life cycle; and the operator Bending Spoons has proved that AI hot products can be replicated in batches.

Bending Spoons is a very amazing company, and its model is different from all other AI companies. It has a lot of popular products, most of which were purchased, and then transformed by itself to create popular products.

In addition to Remini, the products "acquired + transformed" by Bending Spoons include professional camera application Focos, video editor Splice, photo and video editing application Filmic, event startup Meetup, and American company Evernote.

Unlike venture capital firms that value financial returns and large companies that value strategic synergy, Bending Spoons acquires products that have been initially verified by the market, and then redesigns the product, marketing, and commercialization according to its own ideas. It will rewrite the software code of the APP, change the software architecture, modify the user interface, and adjust the charging model to make the original product more popular and more profitable.

For example, Focos, which was officially rated as an excellent APP by Apple, was originally a product developed by a Chinese developer. After it was launched, it quickly accumulated a large number of users in the United States, Japan, Russia and other markets, and was later acquired by Bending Spoons. Before the acquisition, Focos users were very active, but the monetization rate was not high. After Bending Spoons took over, it boldly promoted commercialization and quickly raised the user payment rate.

This model tests the operational capabilities of the operator. This company is like an APP factory, a bit like ByteDance in China.

According to data disclosed by Bending Spoons, the MAU (monthly active users) of its products is about 100 million. Sensor Tower data shows that Remini's revenue on iOS was $4 million in March this year.

As one of the few products that have made it to the toC market, what domestic manufacturers should learn from Remini is how to innovate in product design and operation, and promote products by improving user experience and engagement, rather than just showing off parameters and technology. After all, technology is just empty talk if it is not implemented in products.

Perhaps before long, the trend of clay filters will pass, and manufacturers will have to think about other new features.

Author: Liming; Editor: Wei Jia; WeChat public account: Dingjiao