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After I showed it in preview end of last monthRunway has officially released Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, the latest version of its AI video generation model that the company claims is seven times faster and costs half as much as its predecessor, Gen-3 Alpha.
The goal? To make AI video production more accessible to a wider audience, regardless of subscription plan, including free trials.
The New York City company announced the news on its X account: “Gen-3 Alpha Turbo Image to Video is now available and delivers 7x faster generation for half the price of the original Gen-3 Alpha. All while delivering the same performance across many use cases. Turbo is available on all plans, including free trials. More model improvements, controls, and real-time interactivity capabilities are coming.”
Gen-3 Alpha Turbo builds on the already impressive capabilities of Runway's Gen-3 Alpha, which gained attention for its realistic video generation.
Runway has pushed the boundaries even further with this latest release, prioritizing speed without sacrificing performance. According to Runway co-founder and CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela, the new Turbo model means that “it now takes longer to type a sentence than it does to generate a video.”
This leap in speed solves a critical problem with AI video generation models: time delay, enabling near-real-time video production.
Users can expect a smoother and more efficient workflow, especially in industries where fast turnaround times are essential.
Wide accessibility and aggressively low prices
Runway's decision to reduce the cost of deploying Gen-3 Alpha Turbo fits with the company's strategy to drive broader adoption of its technology.
While the Gen-3 Alpha Regular is priced at 10 credits per second of video generated by the model, the Gen-3 Alpha Turbo is said to be priced at 5 credits per second of video, which Runway says is 50% less.
Credits can be purchased in bundles starting at 1,000 credits on the Runway website or as part of monthly or annual subscription levels. The cost is $10 for 1,000 credits, or $0.01 per credit.
Since the model is available across all plans, including free trials, a wide spectrum of users – from hobbyists to professional creators – can benefit from these improvements.
By offering a faster, cheaper alternative, Runway is positioning itself to maintain an edge in the rapidly evolving AI video generation market, where rivals such as Pika Labs, Luma AI's Dream Machine, Kuaishou's Kling and OpenAI's Sora are also vying for dominance.
But despite OpenAI showcasing Sora in January of this year and releasing it to a select group of creators, OpenAI’s video model is still not accessible to the general public. Other video generation models often take much longer to generate from text and images. In my tests, it took more than a few minutes.
Promising first results
Runway Gen-3 Alpha Turbo users and subscribers are already sharing videos they shot with the new model and are impressed with the combination of speed and quality.
Although the number of seconds it takes to generate two seconds of video is not always 1×1, users are still very enthusiastic about the overall experience with the new model. It shows a wide range of styles, from realistic to animation and anime.
Some users, like @LouiErik8Irl on X, prefer the regular Gen-3 Alpha model for its higher quality in their eyes, but still see value in being able to quickly generate simple moves via the Gen-3 Alpha Turbo.
Future improvements and unresolved legal/ethical issues
Runway isn’t resting on its laurels with the release of Gen-3 Alpha Turbo. The company has hinted at more improvements to come, including improvements to the model’s control mechanisms and real-time interactivity capabilities.
Previously, on its older Gen-2 model, Runway offered the ability to edit selective objects and parts of a video with its Multi Motion Brushallowing for more precise control of the AI algorithms and the resulting clips.
However, the company continues to navigate the ethical complexities of AI model training. Runway has faced scrutiny over the sources of its training data, particularly after a 404 Media report that the company may have used copyrighted content from YouTube for training purposes without permission.
While Runway has not commented on these allegations, the broader industry is grappling with similar challenges as Legal battles over use of copyrighted material in AI training are increasing.
As the debate over ethical AI practices unfolds, Runway and other generative AI companies may find themselves forced to provide more information about their training data and methods. The outcome of these discussions could have important implications for the future of AI model development and deployment.