Will Remini, who has become popular through clay filters, be another “wonderful duck”?

“We turned into clay people like this!”
This year’s May Day holiday, a clay filter application called “Remini” began to become popular on various social media platforms. Although it has not yet been fully localized, this does not hinder Remini from quickly reaching the top and dominating the top of the Apple App pay list.

This is a paid mapping application that costs 68 yuan per week and 548 yuan per year. Young people are not only not intimidated by such high charging standards, but also engage in paid P-map buying and selling in social media and e-commerce.
The three characteristics of Remini are clay people, ugly and cute, and unstable losers. Every natural photo can show a different ugliness and cuteness, which quickly captures the curiosity of young people.
Similar to many mapping software, Remini mainly uses AI impression processing techniques to enhance the quality of photos and videos in details, colors, and clarity, such as using AI techniques to create blurry and old photos.
The pioneering team for this application came from Beijing Dagong Technology Private Company. This private company once launched a mapping filter called “You and I Back then” in 2019, focusing on construction efficiency. At the same time, they also privately launched a mapping application for overseas shopping malls – Remini. The latter was purchased by Italy’s Bending Spoons private company.
Afterwards, the two applications disappeared without any different growth experiences. “You and I were back then” gradually did not decline in China, but Remini became popular in social media with multiple filters such as old photo construction, aging photos, work photos, and unborn baby photos.
According to information from Minwang, Remini currently has 40 million monthly dull users, 15 million monthly downloads, and 5 billion enhanced photos/videos.
Following Remini’s footsteps, Meitu Xiuxiu, a subsidiary of Meitu Private Company (01357. HK), quickly launched clay filters and paid for their use. They, like the previously popular Miao Duck cameras, both use AI image processing and punishment techniques, and have become symbol level applications with one or several features.
And behind these software’s lack of popularity, it is the exploration of the practical cost of the pursuit of skills by big model related private companies. Among them, the application of AIGC (the innate essence of artificial intelligence) in the impression needs side is regarded as one of the first tracks to land.
A group of investors led by Zhu Xiaohu, the managing partner of Jinshajiang Venture Capital, attach great importance to utilization and monetization. He politely stated during a movement on May 8th that the form of large mold trade was very poor, with no difference in skills, and each generation of molds had to spend money again, with a monetization cycle of only two to three years.
The main assets of artificial intelligence include chips, development of large molds, and private companies based on the use of large molds. The financing amount required for the large mold private company is huge, with high costs, and how to reduce land use through trade is still an unresolved issue.
Becoming a private company using a large model app may be a more realistic choice, such as Fangmeitu’s Meitu Xiuxiu, and various vertical applications under Wanfei Technology’s Meow Shadow and Playblast.
“Meitu has the potential to become the first domestic visual big mold private company that can achieve a range of dividends,” Meitu founder Wu Xinhong once said at the mid 2023 event.
The private company did indeed experience a double decline in revenue and net profit in the 2023 fiscal year, especially a 233.2% year-on-year decrease in net profit, mainly due to the lack of growth in AI’s main business expenses.
Wanshou Technology’s net profit in previous years also achieved a three digit growth, a year-on-year decrease of 113.2%. The technology research and development cost it has added reaches 402 million yuan, accounting for nearly 30% of the total revenue, setting a new historical high.
Remini’s parent company, Bending Spoons, also exaggerates the down-to-earth use of AI in the straight category. This private company, established in 2013, has gained popularity in popular applications such as Remini, Slice, and Evernote. Splice is a video production and editing application, while Evernote focuses on laptop applications.
In the short term, the use of big models focused on image processing punishment is relatively easy to lose money, but how to achieve long-term growth is a major challenge that small and medium-sized AI private companies need to face.
Looking back at similar applications of explosive water in the past, it can be noticed that due to the more object oriented and less demanding application scenarios, after a burst of water, such applications will face difficulties in user promotion and preservation. Lensa AI, which received high praise for its AI selfies in domestic shopping malls, had a download quality exceeding 17 million times in December 2022, but it quickly declined in January of previous years.
The same goes for Miaoya Camera, according to Qimai Data. Since its launch on the iOS platform, the app has once dominated the product list, but since then, its ranking has continued to decline. Currently, it has fallen out of the top 200 on the App Store fee list. To prevent becoming the next “clever duck”, Reminis also need to explore more renewable energy sources.