The app was created by three former Google employees who left the tech giant after becoming bored with its lack of creativity. They believe that mainstream social media has become too polished and predictable, and hope that Yolk's playful, unfiltered approach will appeal to teens and young adults. The app has already raised $1.25 million in pre-seed funding and officially launched out of beta on February 26. The creators plan to promote the app on TikTok and through university outreach, and are considering introducing premium features to generate revenue.
Key takeaways:
- Yolk is a new iOS app that uses on-device AI to allow users to communicate visually, sending custom live stickers they create instead of text messages.
- The app, which targets a younger demographic, uses Apple’s Vision APIs and on-device machine learning for object detection and foreground/background segmentation, and an open-sourced “face parsing” model for facial recognition.
- Yolk's creators believe that the app's playful, creative approach to social interaction, along with its unique constraints on communication, will help it stand out in a crowded market.
- The app has raised $1.25 million in pre-seed funding from a number of Asian investment funds and angels, and officially launched out of beta on February 26, 2024.