Two veterans from the self-driving car industry have launched a startup called Odyssey in San Francisco. The company aims to provide AI software tools for professional filmmakers and animators to create high-quality films using generative AI. Odyssey has recently emerged from "stealth mode" with $9 million in seed funding from GV, DCVC, Air Street Capital, and several individual investors. Unlike existing text-to-video models, Odyssey aims to offer filmmakers more control over the generated shots and ensure consistency throughout longer frame sequences.

The company plans to create a family of AI models specializing in tasks such as rendering, material effects, motion, and lighting. Odyssey's founders, Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke, both hail from the self-driving car industry and believe their expertise in AI software can be applied to the creation of visual effects in movies. The company intends to gather its own real-world datasets to train its models, unlike other companies that rely on scraping the internet for data. Odyssey aims to use the seed funding to expand its team and develop larger AI models using graphics processing units.