This AI video generator can melt, crush, blow up, or turn anything into cake

AI video developer Pika Labs has joined the recent onslaught of new and improved tools by releasing Pika 1.5, a redesigned model with a number of new features. These visual effects, or “Pikaffects” as the company calls them, come about a year after Pika 1.0's initial debut. The timing of the release, right after rivals like Runway Gen-3, Hotshot and Luma Labs' Dream Machine 1.5, suggests that the competition for AI video supremacy is far from over, even as people look to a broader one Release of OpenAI's Sora model awaits.

Pika 1.5 increases photorealism and gives users more camera control, with some pretty impressive results. But the Pikaffects are definitely the showstoppers, with bizarre physical changes that seem to blend with the reality of the video, even if they would be impossible to film in real life. A new button in the Pika interface opens the list of options for handling objects in the video. Maybe you want to watch a dog inflate like a balloon and float away, a castle melt like butter, a sandwich get squished, a car explode, or a kitten get squished. You can perform all of the above steps using buttons on which the corresponding verbs are located. It doesn't happen out of nowhere either. The buttons cause hands to come in and crush the cat, or a hydraulic press to crush the sandwich.