Dean Leitersdorf and I are on Zoom, watching a Sabrina Carpenter music video.
In “Taste,” Carpenter and Jenna Ortega comically feud in over-the-top fashion—complete with chainsaws, machetes, and camp. But we’re not watching the original. In real-time, the video is transfigured into a snowy animated wonderland, courtesy of an AI model called Mirage. The model was built by Decart, an AI lab focused on interactive experiences that Leitersdorf cofounded and leads. The site calls Mirage a “world transformation model,” but Leitersdorf prefers “livestream diffusion model”—“a way better name,” he says.
