Written by: Cookie, Rhythm
Since Musk's 'crazy milk' Grok's AI companion made $Ani one of the 'Golden Dogs' on Letsbonk.fun, the market has slowly begun to regain confidence in the AI track. With pump.fun returning to the top in the 'meme launchpad war', a new AI big dog $SPARK emerged on pump.fun last weekend.
This morning, after $SPARK set a historical high market cap of $73 million, it has retraced and is currently close to $57.5 million.
So, what exactly is the narrative of $SPARK?
Illusion of Life, a company aiming to be 'AI Disney'
On February 25 of this year, animator Pasquale D'Silva announced that he and AI developer Kevin Fischer co-founded Illusion of Life, supported by Spark Capital's Nabeel Hyatt.
'Illusion of Life', this name comes from Walt Disney's famous animation principle - 'The Illusion of Life'. They want to use the AI technology of this era to make animated characters more vibrant.
Spark, an animated character of an 'AI dog', appeared on animator Pasquale D'Silva's Instagram when Illusion of Life was announced.
On July 19, animator Pasquale D'Silva released a short video of Spark visiting the logo and graphic design department of Disney Animation Studios.
On July 29, he released a video of Spark taking a private plane again. In this video, Spark was very excited, suggesting to fly the plane and asking for food.
On August 5, Kevin Fischer announced that he handed over his Twitter to Spark, making Spark the first entrepreneurial virtual AI being. Spark's story will be told by itself.
It was on this day that the $SPARK token launched on pump.fun. The same ticker on Bags once exceeded a market cap of a million dollars, but eventually ran out on pump.fun. Before it ran out, on August 6, there was an incident where Illusion of Life's official Twitter announced that they had not created any tokens and had no financial ties with any tokens, causing $SPARK to drop from a high point close to a market cap of $20 million to below $2 million.
Until the early morning of August 9, Spark ran into the $SPARK community to say hello, and the trend of $SPARK instantly changed, rising all the way from then on.
It can be said that Illusion of Life is an 'AI animation company' that created the animated character of Spark the AI dog and allows it to write its own story in reality and on the internet.
Since animator Pasquale D'Silva has created other animated characters in his previous career and directly mentioned two other animated character tickers on August 5, $tanaki and $starby were also hyped up for a time.
In addition, he also released a video about littleguy, which caused the project not belonging to the 'Spark universe' to be hyped up.
littleguy is more like an ICM project, creating wearable electronic pets, which has raised $1.2 million in funding. The founder of this project has also noticed the heat from Crypto and actively reached out to the founders of pump.fun and Believe.
Conclusion
Overall, the surge of $SPARK indeed gives a feeling that AI Season 2.0 is about to start. Looking back at the previous wave of AI Season, it was initiated by AI memes. $SPARK can indeed be classified as an AI meme, but its narrative has evolved compared to the first wave of AI memes. It carries the vision of an 'AI animation company' that produces content through active contact with various people and things in reality and on the internet, breaking free from the traditional Q&A format of AI companions.
In the video visiting Disney Animation Studios, Spark made the employees laugh. It has its own understanding and emotions, as Kevin Fischer said, many people have already treated Sparks as a real being.
Will this adorable AI dog kick off AI Season 2.0? We shall see.