[AI Revolution] "20 Short-Form Videos in 3 Minutes"... Picardy Transforms Short-Form Production with AI

Jung Wonmo, CEO of Picardy
Revolutionizing Editing Time with 'Pikaclip'
"Service Expansion Planned for Dramas and Sports"

"Short-form video production, which used to take more than six hours, can now be completed in just three minutes using artificial intelligence (AI)."

Jung Wonmo, CEO of Picardy, whom we met on June 2 at the Orange Planet Building in Yeoksam-dong, Seoul, said, "Word is spreading as we have dramatically reduced the time and cost required to produce short-form videos." Demand is increasing not only among companies and influencers, but also among ordinary individuals who are becoming interested in creating short-form content. Jung emphasized, "Normally, producing 10 short-form videos takes 400 minutes and costs 200,000 won, but with Picardy's AI service 'Pikaclip,' you can create 20 short-form videos in just three minutes." The subscription fee for the service is about 5,000 won per month. This means time is reduced by a factor of 130, and costs by a factor of 40.

Jung Wonmo, CEO of Picardy, is being interviewed by Asia Economy at the office in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Photo by Jo Yongjun

Pikaclip is a service that automatically analyzes long-form videos using AI, extracts the most interesting moments, and turns them into short-form videos. It eliminates the hassle of manually adding subtitles and selecting editing points. The AI also identifies key moments for humor or information. Jung cited a notable example: "From a one-hour video, we selected a three-second scene of grilling pork belly, which attracted 3.6 million views. The original video was a documentary by the Educational Broadcasting System (EBS) showing workers laboring in a kiln, but the AI focused on the 'kiln pork belly' scene that appeared in the middle, and it became a hit."

It is also possible to predict in advance which of the 20 short-form videos produced by AI will be successful. During the long-form analysis process, Pikaclip sets a 'target persona' and scores how much this persona would prefer each short-form video. For example, if a user submits a long-form video about cars, Pikaclip sets the persona as a "male car enthusiast in his 30s" and then scores each of the 20 short-form videos based on how well they are likely to be received by this persona.

Example image applying Pikaclip's short-form video editing style. Pikadi

Picaclip automatically analyzes long-form videos using AI and extracts the most interesting moments to create short-form videos. Picadi

Having attracted 6,300 users and produced a total of 200,000 short-form videos in less than a year since its launch, Picardy plans to further enhance Pikaclip so that it can better understand visual information. Jung said, "So far, Pikaclip has excelled at creating videos that focus on delivering information through audio, such as lectures and self-development content. However, by participating in Google's accelerator (AC) program 'AI First,' which supports AI startups, we are expanding our service to content where visual information is crucial, such as dramas, movies, and sports." He added, "We also plan to add editing techniques in which AI creates background removal (nukki-cut) and follows the movements of people to add visual effects."

Picardy's technological capabilities were recognized when it was selected for the Ministry of SMEs and Startups' technology startup support program 'TIPS' in August last year. Instead of developing a foundation model in-house, the company is enhancing its technological capabilities by utilizing application programming interfaces (APIs) such as Google's Gemini. Jung said, "Rather than spending enormous time and money on developing our own AI model, we have focused on creating valuable and efficient services by utilizing APIs."