AWS Public Sector Blog
CreatorUp harnesses AWS AI tools to scale digital content development
After responding to the increased need for online learning during the pandemic, the market for educational and professional learning content has continued to expand. The global digital education content market is predicted to jump from today’s $60 billion market value to a $180 billion in the next decade, according to FactMR.
A growing list of educational organizations, including Kaplan, McGraw Hill, New York University (NYU), and Coursera, have turned to CreatorUp to meet the rising demand. CreatorUp combines an innovative mix of human-powered creatives and generative artificial intelligence (AI) provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help organizations quickly scale their digital content production.
CreatorUp helps the education sector meet content demand—quickly
When it comes to developing digital course content, one of the biggest challenges is scalability. In-house resources and outside agencies typically cannot produce content at a level or pace that matches the need.
“Content creation is very much a cottage industry,” explains Nick Almond, CreatorUp COO. “Agencies or in-house learning teams often specialize in certain aspects but struggle at delivering an all-around product. And they typically cannot scale up to meet the needs of a larger project.”
A major publisher recently approached CreatorUp with a large project. The publisher needed to create 1,200 videos for a new app it was offering, and delivery was required within a few months. Thanks to CreatorUp—and the AI infrastructure provided by AWS—this demand was quickly met.
“That was the equivalent of 56 feature films that we developed,” says Almond. “And we did it with our global creative network and our AI platform—quickly, effectively, and at scale.”
Leveraging generative AI to provide Studio as a Service
The secret to CreatorUp’s ability to meet such high demand is its Studio as a Service experience—a combination of generative AI and human creativity. This cloud-based platform consists of four components:
- The creator network, a worldwide workforce of more than 8,000 experienced creative professionals available to assist in every aspect of content creation.
- The CreateTrack tool, a one-stop system for budgeting, project tracking, communication, and invoicing.
- The CreatorUp store, an ecommerce experience for purchasing the 900 different digital media services being offered.
- Daisy, a generative AI platform, enhances the entire digital content creation process by scaling content development through sophisticated, multistep prompts that leverage multiple advanced AI models, while offering human support at the click of a button..
Partnering with AWS was a natural fit for this cloud-based startup. AWS provided the scalability, security, and speed of delivery that could support CreatorUp’s ambitious goals. Crucially, AWS also offered Amazon Bedrock, the company’s generative AI managed service, which allowed CreatorUp to use high-performing foundation models (FMs) from leading AI companies—along with access to AWS generative AI experts who could assist in optimizing Daisy.
Introducing Daisy, a generative AI platform powered by Amazon Bedrock
Daisy is at the heart of the company’s ability to deliver comprehensive and scalable education content. When working with Daisy, users follow multistep prompts to build out the course content needed—whether it’s writing a script, adding images, creating an avatar, translating into specific languages, or building quiz questions.
While users experience a single AI platform, Daisy is built on top of 35 aggregated AI large language models (LLMs), all daisy-chained together. “The combination of models that we use—accessing the multiple foundation models in Amazon Bedrock—is much more powerful than any single foundation model,” says Gary Lue, CreatorUp’s chief digital officer and CIO. “That’s what using Amazon Bedrock affords us.”
Having access to so many different AI options allows CreatorUp to pair the right model with the right outcome. For example, if one model proves better at delivering a certain output, like visual images, CreatorUp will configure Daisy to use that particular AI model when handling visual image requests.
“One thing CreatorUp is really leveraging with Amazon Bedrock is the multitude of foundational models, and I think that’s key to their business value,” says Raian Osman, AWS solutions architect.
CreatorUp also takes advantage of the continuous upgrades and improvements to Amazon Bedrock’s models—and the company is able to seamlessly deliver these updates to its clients through Daisy. “Our team is constantly testing these models for very specific purposes,” says Almond. “There are more than a hundred templates available for just doing that—writing scripts, social media templates, and so on. It is continuously being optimized behind the scenes.”
The benefits of AI—with a human touch
While CreatorUp is built on a foundation of advanced AI technology, a key differentiator is its 8,000-strong global network of creative humans. As users work through Daisy’s multistep prompts, guidance from a professional from CreatorUp’s creator network is ready to assist. At any point in the process, users can click a button at the bottom of the screen and book an appointment with an editor, graphic designer, writer, or other creative professional for whatever assistance they need.
Human assistance is also one of the perks of working with AWS. “In addition to hosting and the other services that came with that, Amazon provided access to their teams and their experts,” says Almond. “When our team was trying to get our arms around generative AI, for example, they connected us with machine learning specialists to help explore some new areas. We also had a session with people on the innovation side of Amazon, helping explore business models and running design-thinking workshops with us. They were very hands-on.”
Future innovations include video and personalized learning content
The next step for CreatorUp is video production and personalized learning. “We’re on the verge of actually creating video,” says Almond. “Expanding on multimedia formats of video is the next development for us—getting more sophisticated with video creation.”
In addition, Almond believes that CreatorUp can deliver on an important education goal: personalized learning. “The cost of content creation, going into a studio, doing so many versions of something—that’s typically cost-prohibitive for personalized learning. But with CreatorUp, with generative AI, those barriers come crashing down. We can offer that holy grail of personalized education.”
“I love their pace of innovation,” adds Osman. “Now they’ve got their eyes on dynamic content like video production. Their ability to think of an idea and then actually execute on it is super impressive. I’ve learned a lot working with CreatorUp as a customer.”