Pixit
Professional headshots without a photographer
Professional headshots play an important role for companies, both for internal corporate culture and for external perception.
However, the creation of professional headshots is associated with considerable effort and costs because external corporate photographers entail inflexible processes (e.g., scheduling with employees).
Current solutions are often inefficient, costly and cannot be scaled to the extent that modern companies require.
High-quality, realistic images for a consistent corporate identity
Pixit offers a simple, fast and cost-effective solution for the creation of professional headshots. Our AI platform uses the latest research in the field of generative AI.
Only a few photos are required, which employees can easily take using their own cell phones. Within a very short time, the AI platform generates high-quality, lifelike images that reflect the company's corporate identity.
How did you get together as a team?
As part of his doctorate at the University of Cologne, Jannik missed the opportunity to have professional headshots taken twice: Once shortly before he started working as a research assistant and later, towards the end of his doctorate, when he was on vacation.
There were no further photo shootings during his 4-year doctorate. The lack of photos forced him to rely on outdated, black and white images for the company website, research proposals, cooperation requests, presentations at international conferences, and internal tools such as Slack, Zoom, or Teams.
Nils was also aware of the problem: During his work as a consultant, he noticed that the pictures of employees for the various projects with clients were mostly outdated and unrepresentative. Due to the high fluctuation and long geographical distances, it was hardly possible to take professional headshots.
In addition, the employees did not use photos with a uniform corporate identity for customer projects. This problem led us to revolutionize conventional professional headshots creation processes with innovative, AI-supported techniques.
What are you studying/working or what have you studied?
We both studied Information Systems at Bachelor's and Master's level.
Jannik subsequently completed his doctorate in Machine Learning at the University of Cologne. During his doctorate, he worked as a machine learning scientist at Booking.com in Amsterdam and was involved in various collaborative projects as a machine learning consultant. Among other things, he held a research fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Nils worked as an IT consultant in Switzerland for 2 ½ years after completing his Master's degree. He has also worked as a freelance web developer and consultant for several small and medium-sized web projects for almost a decade. During his studies, he spent time abroad in Russia and South Korea.
Funfact
The world's first photograph, taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, required an exposure time of eight hours - today at Pixit we only need seconds to generate professional photos.
What has Gateway ESC helped you with?
Even though we are still a young start-up, Gateway has already been able to help us a lot, from applying for the EXIST grant to providing a workplace in the InnoDom and making new contacts through various events.