by Doug Petkanics, Livepeer Co-founder and CEO.

From automating labor-intensive editing tasks to generating entirely new content, AI tools are transforming how video is created, processed, and delivered.

In May 2019, a video of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, appearing to be drunkenly slurring her speech, went viral. It was quickly debunked as a deepfake—a manipulated video designed to mislead viewers.

In recent weeks, Livepeer's new AI pipelines have experienced remarkable growth, fueled by our engineering team's dedication and the innovative startups in our AI startup program. By harnessing our existing distributed network of GPU resources—already renowned for distributed video transcoding—we've unleashed powerful generative AI capabilities for developers. Now, you can tap into advanced AI inference through familiar API and SDK tooling at a fraction of the cost of centralized solutions. Livepeer AI is transforming the landscape of generative app development, making state-of-the-art AI more accessible than ever.

The rapid advancement of generative AI has ushered in a new era of creativity and innovation. Powerful tools, like OpenAI's Sora and Stable Diffusion, have demonstrated the magic of text-to-video generation, attracting millions of users within mere months of publicly launching their latest AI products. Yet there still remains one major hurdle for AI to reach its full potential: the costly centralization of AI compute resources, which has led to major bottlenecks that drive up prices for developers and creators alike.

Prohibitive costs, and expensive vendor lock-ins. Severely limited scalability, and black box systems that prevent customization. Complicated tools that stall creativity, rather than fostering it. These are just some features of the current AI market dominated by a few major players, from hardware providers like NVIDIA to large-language model platforms like OpenAI.

August was an important month for Livepeer, filled with significant milestones, impactful collaborations, and substantial progress in shaping the future of decentralized AI and video infrastructure. From partnerships with major Web3 players to the launch of innovative programs, August solidified Livepeer's position at the intersection of AI, crypto, and media. Here's a deeper look at the key highlights from the past month.

We believe the possibilities of AI can be limitless when embracing the power of decentralization.

Across industries, AI tools have tremendous potential to help ordinary people to do extraordinary things, from doctors detecting diseases earlier, designers building novel creations, to parents freeing their time with automated assistants.