Text was just the beginning for AI: Introducing Liquid Interactive

Over the past few years, we've seen ChatGPT go from a research prototype to a household name. While large language models have fundamentally changed how we interact with computers, the interface has largely stayed the same: you type into a chat box and receive a response. Since AI has exploded in the public domain, we've noticed that most AI products have been the same. A chatbot here, a writing assistant there. They're all variations on one idea: text in, text out.

With how fast AI models have been improving, it's easy to forget how early we are in this new era of computing. The most valuable platforms in history didn't win because of the raw technology underneath them. They won because someone built a genuinely new experience around it. Early computers meant typing commands into a blank prompt; the graphical interface replaced all that with windows, icons, and a mouse, and suddenly you didn't need to learn the computer's language. Tech breakthroughs rarely come from the invention itself. They come from making it useful, turning raw capability into something people actually reach for.

That's the bet behind Liquid Interactive. Incubated in AXL with $700,000 in pre-seed funding from the venture studio, we're now spinning out as our own company, building truly visual-first, interactive AI. Our first product, Liquid Photos, offers a glimpse into the future and is available today.

What is Liquid Photos?

Liquid Photos uses generative AI to turn the static images in your camera roll into something you can move through and share. Here's what that means:

• Turn a hike into an interactive journey. Add a series of hiking photos and Liquid Photos reconstructs the trail between them, letting viewers swipe through the route instead of flipping through disconnected images.
• Make products interactive. Pull apart a watch on your wrist or step into a room to discover what's around the corner. The app generates interactive visuals from ordinary photos, no 3D scan or special equipment required.
• Ask questions about your photos. Learn about your camera roll by asking questions like “What mountain is this?”, “What breed is my dog?”, or “How do I use this product?” Liquid Photos generates visual, interactive explanations directly from your images.
• Share it anywhere. Send your interactive experience with a link that opens instantly in the browser, view it directly in iMessage, or export it as a video for social media. The result is a photo app that feels less like an archive and more like a place to explore.

Where we're headed

Liquid Photos is the first of several planned products built on the same underlying technology, with one shared goal: to make creating and interacting with content feel fundamentally different.

The bigger opportunity is what happens when the same experience moves beyond your camera roll and into the places brands and creative teams already work.

That's what we're building with Liquid Studio: a way for brands, agencies, and creative teams to build these interactive experiences into their own products, pages, and campaigns through an API. It turns a flat product shot into something a customer can move through and explore, without a 3D pipeline, a specialist team, or a custom build. A drone listing becomes a flight through a mountain valley; a watch can be explored from the inside out rather than scrolled past; a campaign becomes something people play with instead of skim.

Photos are where the world meets the Liquid experience first, because everyone has a camera roll and the magic is immediate. But this is a platform, not a single app, and we're just getting started.

Who's building it

Liquid Interactive is led by Sasha Ivanov (co-founder and CEO) and Ben Pearman (co-founder and CTO), who built the first version inside AXL before spinning it out.

The two previously co-founded Maple Scan, a top-charting iOS app with more than 130,000 downloads. We started Liquid within AXL on a conviction that runs deeper than a product roadmap: the most exciting AI isn't something you wait for, it's something you build. AXL is where we got to do exactly that, and we're proud of what we built there before we spun out Liquid Interactive.

Why now?

None of this was possible eighteen months ago. Liquid Photos sits on top of a wave of generative breakthroughs that only recently matured enough to combine: reliable image and video generation, seamless transitions between frames, consistent high-resolution output.

Making this work meant solving genuine research problems. Liquid has filed 11 provisional patent applications covering the techniques that make the interactive experience work, from the way photos bridge seamlessly into one another to the gesture controls that let people scrub through and pull apart a single image.

Each of those was a research problem not long ago. Together, they unlock an experience that simply couldn't have existed before.

Get early access

Liquid Photos is in beta ahead of its App Store and Google Play debut. Get early access to Liquid Photos here — invites for iPhone and Android are rolling out now. We've been blown away by the early response, alongside interest from some of the most respected names in AI and design.

This is the first step, not the last. Go make something, we're curious what you'll do with it.