On June 17, Runway released Gen-3 Alpha and made it available for use today. I specially upgraded to a premium membership to try it out.

User experience

The Prompt is very sophisticated, and there's an official guide: https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/30586818553107-Gen-3-Alpha-Prompting-Guide.

The format of the Prompt is as follows:

[camera movement]: [establishing scene]. [additional details].

I'll try this one first:

Low angle static shot: The camera is angled up at a handsome man wearing all orange as he stands in a tropical rainforest with colorful flora. The dramatic sky is overcast and gray.

The generation speed is acceptable:

Effect video (still has some bugs):

Model Introduction

Gen-3 Alpha was trained at scale on Runway's new infrastructure for large-scale multimodal training. Compared to Gen-2, Gen-3 Alpha delivers significant improvements in fidelity, consistency, and motion performance, representing an important step toward building universal world models.

Subtle reflections of a woman on the window of a train moving at hyper-speed in a Japanese city.

Through joint training on videos and images, Gen-3 Alpha will power Runway’s text-to-video, image-to-video, and text-to-image tools, as well as existing control modes such as Motion Brush, Advanced Camera Controls, Director Mode, and upcoming tools that offer finer control over structure, style, and motion.

Gen-3 Alpha will come with a range of new safeguards, including an improved internal visual review system and C2PA provenance standards.

Handheld tracking shot, following a red balloon floating above the ground in an abandoned street.

Features

• : Gen-3 Alpha has undergone highly descriptive, time-intensive subtitle training, enabling precise keyframe control for creative transitions and scene elements.

A tsunami coming through an alley in Bulgaria, dynamic movement.

• : Gen-3 Alpha excels at generating expressive character figures, covering a wide range of poses, gestures, and emotions, opening up new possibilities for storytelling.

• : Training Gen-3 Alpha was a collaborative effort by research scientists, engineers, and artists across disciplines. It is designed to interpret various styles and cinematic terminologies.

View out a window of a giant strange creature walking in a rundown city at night, one single street lamp dimly lighting the area.

Industry customization

As part of the Gen-3 series models, Runway collaborated with leading entertainment and media organizations to create customized versions of the Gen-3 model. Customization of the Gen-3 model allows for greater stylistic control and consistency in characters, optimized for specific artistic and narrative needs. (Still, customization is key to monetization..)