How D-ID’s Award-Winning Generative AI Animation Tool Reached a Million Users

Bringing the viral Creative Reality™ Studio to mobile

In 2022, a startup called D-ID went viral. Partnering with genealogy platform MyHeritage, they gave people the power to upload old photos of their relatives and bring them to life, using D-ID's groundbreaking Deep Nostalgia technology. 

It was like being transported into the future, the past, and the world of Harry Potter—all at the same time. 

Deep Nostalgia was just one of many tools on D-ID's platform. (An artist and creator used a similar tool from D-ID to make a viral YouTube video, “Harry Potter by Balenciaga.”) Their sales and marketing tool—the one for which they ultimately won a Golden Kitty from Product Hunt—helps save time and money, and allows creative teams to avoid reshooting by animating photographs. 

“It gives freedom to users’ creativity and imagination in ways that were never possible before,” said Dor Bar Shalom, the Director of Product at D-ID.

There was one problem: D-ID's Creative Reality Platform was optimized for desktop, but didn't work very well on mobile. They needed a mobile app.

The goal was not just to port over the company’s core API-powered capabilities of the web app but to add mobile features—like taking a selfie for avatar creation and in-app voice recording and uploading, allowing users to easily create extraordinarily life-like videos while on the go.

Generative AI tools now live in your pocket

A.Team assembled a dynamic group of six expert mobile developers and integrated them seamlessly with D-ID's product team. This collaborative effort focused on overcoming the technical intricacies of mobile app development—not to mention getting past the gatekeepers of the App Store—while maintaining the essence of D-ID's creative AI tools. 

As a talent solution, A.Team was perfect for D-ID because of the speed at which they wanted to get up and running. “The A.Team model allows you to go from 1 to 100 very quickly, from conception to execution. There was hardly any onboarding,” Bar Shalom said.

"The A.Team model allows you to go from 1 to 100 very quickly."

They took an agile approach, including rapid deployment of updates via code push, and delivered an MVP in under five months. This strategy not only preserved the integrity of D-ID's web-based Studio but also introduced new mobile-specific functionalities, bridging the gap between web and mobile user experiences.

The Creative Reality™ Studio mobile app enables users to create customized digital humans that look, sound, and speak like real people, offering unparalleled creative freedom to creators and businesses.

Winning the 2023 Golden Kitty

The team hit the ground running, worked tirelessly, and launched the MVP in five months. The app now has 1M downloads and a 4.5 App Store rating. Most significantly, Product Hunt declared the mobile app the winner of this year’s Golden Kitty Award for Best Marketing & Sales Tool, after D-ID earned 2,000 upvotes on their site on Product Hunt.

This venture into the mobile domain didn’t just replicate the web experience; it expanded D-ID's reach and increased creative potential for users, bringing powerful generative AI tools into your pocket.

About D-ID

D-ID has raised a total funding of $48M from tier-1 VCs. Satisfied recent customers include Warner Brothers Pictures, Publicis, Mondelez, Skilldora, and MyHeritage. Over 150 million videos have been created using their technology and almost 270,000 developers have generated a D-ID API key in the last year alone.

Read more about D-ID in Tech Crunch, Vox, and Adweek.