Universe Group Uses Amazon SageMaker to Power AI-Driven Photo and Video Editing

Launched in 2023, Visify is a mobile app that uses AI to edit photos and create personalized videos. The solution handles almost everything, from improving image quality and creating business portraits to producing age-progression videos that show how someone might look as they grow older. To accommodate user demand, Universe Group needed to scale this photo- and video-processing infrastructure while maintaining rapid delivery and high-quality outputs.

Universe Group found the ideal foundation for Visify when its team attended an Amazon SageMaker presentation for AWS customers. “We were amazed by the simplicity, flexibility, and variety of approaches for deploying ML endpoints,” says Max Fedchenko, engineering team lead at Universe Group. “We were especially attracted to generative AI.”

Visify uses Amazon SageMaker to deploy and manage 250 ML endpoints. The research and development team at Universe Group uses Amazon SageMaker JupyterLab—a private or shared space that manages the storage and compute resources needed to run the JupyterLab application—to conduct research, test hypotheses, and fine-tune existing models for better results. The company also deploys custom Docker images through Amazon SageMaker endpoints to power nontrivial tasks such as photo enhancement, generation of photorealistic or cartoonish avatars, and video production.

The AI photo and video editor has gained nearly 900,000 users worldwide in just 9 months. Visify has also processed over 600,000 unique AI-generated photos and videos, using up to 3.5 TB of GPU memory at peak performance. Processing times have improved by 82.5 percent: Nine realistic user photos now take 7 minutes compared with the previous 40 minutes. The company has also reduced the time to generate a 15-second video by 75 percent, from 20 to 5 minutes.

Looking ahead, Universe Group plans to introduce new features, including a “magic brush” (for object removal and addition) and “background replace” (for background generation). The company will continue to rely on scalable AWS infrastructure to deliver high-quality results.

“These updates will empower users to fine-tune their photos and videos with greater precision and flexibility,” says Olha Breslavska, chief product officer at Universe Group. “The app will continue using AWS to streamline processing times while also integrating new AI models for even more accurate and personalized outputs.”

Using AI and ML on AWS, Universe Group has established Visify as a highly advanced photo- and video-editing solution. “We are constantly seeking ways to expand and automate to improve operational efficiency,” says Yaroslav Morozov, founder and CEO of Universe Group. “The use of AWS technology has significantly impacted the scalability of our product and enhanced the user experience.”