Spotlighting a company that has integrated AI into its kids content pipeline conscientiously, Google has selected tech-forward animation studio Animaj to receive financial support from its AI Futures Fund.

Although the amount of this funding remains undisclosed, Animaj will also benefit from early access to advanced gen-AI models (Gemini, Imagen and Veo) and opportunities for hands-on support from experts at Google.

The AI Futures Fund is an initiative that Google rolled out last year to identify and invest in startup companies that are building and using AI tools. 

A notable AI pioneer in the kids industry, Animaj credits its AI-supported animation pipeline for helping it achieve incredible speed-to-market results. The studio can now produce high-quality YouTube content in roughly 25% of the time that it would take using a traditional pipeline, estimating the timeline from concept to release at around five weeks.

Animaj and Google’s AI Futures Fund fund say their collaboration will prove that there are ways to incorporate AI into animation in ways that make business sense without putting audiences or artists at risk—and it feels timely, given that experts are sounding the alarm about AI slop on YouTube and the harmful effects that low-quality, AI-made videos pose for developing minds. YouTube recently pledged to reduce the spread of such content aligning with the youth wellbeing initiative it set up last year.

Animaj’s proprietary AI tools (sketch-to-pose, motion-in-betweening) focus on reducing manual work for animators without eliminating them from the process—positioning its tech as a way to ease the creative workflow rather than replace it. For example, AI can quickly fill in the frames between a character’s key poses, giving animators more time to focus on less repetitive tasks. 

With Google’s funding and support, Animaj expects to be able speed up its production timelines even more and expand into new formats like interactive storytelling.

Other companies that have previously benefited from the AI Futures Fund include Indian webtoon app Toonsutra (which uses Gemini to translate comics into multiple languages) and the AI-driven meme creation platform Viggle.