Krikey AI’s Canva integration, built on AWS, offers effortless AI-Generated animations

krikey.ai

By Jonathan Barnett, Solution Architect – AWS

Generative AI has transformed how emails are written, images created and information searched for, and it’s supercharging the possibilities in visual communication. Krikey AI, a generative AI animation startup, has built a tool to democratize 3D animation and enable anyone to animate a talking, 3D character.

Powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), this new solution opens up a world of creative possibilities for teachers, students, marketers and more. To put its technology in the hands of millions of users, Krikey has integrated with Canva.

Canva is a visual communication work-suite that democratizes design and makes it accessible worldwide. As an AWS Partner Network (APN) Technology Partner, Canva’s robust visual communications work-suite runs on AWS.

Canva has embedded AI across every step of the design workflow to empower its 185 million global users to bring their ideas to life more efficiently. Krikey’s 3D AI technology is the latest capability to supercharge the possibilities for users.

Canva’s App SDK enables developers to build and publish design app integrations and use its design and editing capabilities in their apps. Developers have helped Canva quickly scale its AI capabilities by bringing their AI apps to Canva’s App Marketplace, putting them in the hands of enterprise teams and creators on Canva.

Several APN technology partners have developed Canva apps for their products, including Krikey AI.

Why Canva Apps on AWS

For Canva, AWS provided the generative AI support they needed for a distinct app marketplace. “We wanted to bring a variety of creative generative AI tools and developers to Canva. AWS made it easy for developers to quickly sign up to build apps on our website” said Warren Chen, Head of Ecosystem Partnerships & Developer Success, Canva.

“For the Canva team, working with AWS empowered us to get our app marketplace launched quickly, and to attract talented developers and generative AI companies of all sizes.”

Canva chose to work with APN technology partners as the first cohort of developers on their app because of the scalability, security, and reliability of AWS. “AWS reduces customer acquisition costs for both our company and the APN Developers we work with,” explained Fawaz Ahmad, Senior Director of Engineering, Canva.

“It’s simple to scale cost effectively with AWS and to grow resources as app traffic grows. This way, AWS infrastructure lets us introduce new generative AI tools to our customers with the reliability of scalability.”

The Krikey AI Animation integration

Krikey.ai Canva App prompt directing users to use in a new or existing design

As Canva launched their app marketplace, they also identified other APN Partners in the generative AI space to add value for Canva users. AWS brought Canva and Krikey AI together to enrich the customer experience through a product integration.

Krikey AI tools can shorten the time to generate an animation from 5 days to 5 minutes. AI animation empowers developers and creators to generate 3D animations in minutes for games, films, marketing campaigns, educational lesson plans and more. Customers can add personalized lip-synced dialogue to their character in 20+ languages.

“When we built our generative AI animation tools and 3D editor, we knew immediately we could open the animation community to a bigger audience than ever before. Animation is now used in a broader range of verticals – from lesson plans to healthcare tutorials to explainer videos, social media, digital invitations and more. Canva has been very successful at bringing 2D design tools to millions of customers worldwide and we made developing an integration with Canva a top priority.”

– Dr. Ketaki Shriram, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Krikey AI.

Krikey AI has been a Canva customer since 2020 and an AWS customer since 2021. The two companies got introduced through AWS when Krikey AI participated in the AWS Generative AI Accelerator Program. “What started off the business relationship was an AWS Mentor meeting at the 2023 Generative AI Accelerator Program in Palo Alto,” said Dr. Shriram.

“This was an opportunity for us to share our wish list of AWS Partners we’d love to work with and propose an integration. After this meeting, the AWS team connected us with AWS Sydney, who helped connect us with Canva. We discussed a few integration concepts with the Canva team and chose one that would be most powerful for the end Canva and Krikey AI customer.”

Benefits for end customers

The Krikey AI Animate app on Canva provides Canva users with the ability to animate a talking avatar in minutes. “Our relationship with Canva is focused on our shared dedication to our customers,” said Jhanvi Shriram, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Krikey AI.

“With AWS powering our Canva integration, we were able to quickly scale to support a 23x traffic increase overnight. To do this seamlessly we used Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) and Amazon Elasticache for Redis. Canva also supports Krikey AI in retaining 21% of the traffic on our website. We made the decision not to have a mobile app, so all mobile traffic to our website we redirect to our Canva App integration.”

Customers of the Krikey AI app on Canva have seen a number of benefits, particularly in reduced time to creation, an important value for the end customer. “Our shared customers benefit from our Canva integration without having to produce content in multiple platforms and then export and re-upload. This improves the end customer’s time to value creation and keeps their costs low. For decades, 3D animation has been the exclusive realm of companies with the financial and technical skills to create this content. Now, with Krikey’s AI Animation tools, anyone can animate a talking cartoon character.” said Shriram.

What’s next?

Canva believes there are lots of opportunities to both grow the apps marketplace and deepen the relationships with existing app developers. “As Canva looks to continue expanding our reach and impact with customers, we also see opportunities to build deeper relationships with our talented app marketplace developers, particularly those in specialized fields such as Krikey AI’s focus on 3D animation,” said Chen.

As the Canva app marketplace grows, the Canva team plans to continue working with other APN Partners to increase its app offering, all enabled through AWS. “We have a lot of APN Partners who have their service hosted on AWS who want to also build apps on Canva,” explained Ahmad. “The value proposition is clear: we can focus on empowering design and building amazing apps together that surprise and delight our customers. Krikey AI is a great example of the success that is possible for developers building for the Canva apps marketplace.”

Learn more about the AWS APN Partner Program.