AI startup Runway on Monday released what it claims is one of the highest-fidelity AI-powered video generators yet.
Called Gen-4, the tool is rolling out to the company’s individual and enterprise customers. Runway claims that it can generate consistent characters, locations, and objects across scenes, maintain “coherent world environments,” and regenerate elements from different perspectives and positions within scenes.
“Gen-4 can utilize visual references, combined with instructions, to create new images and videos utilizing consistent styles, subjects, locations, and more,” Runway wrote in a blog post, “[a]ll without the need for fine-tuning or additional training.”
Gen-4 sets a new standard for video generation and is a marked improvement over Gen-3 Alpha. It excels in its ability to generate highly dynamic videos with realistic motion as well as subject, object and style consistency with superior prompt adherence and best-in-class world… pic.twitter.com/w9ACO5boJ7
— Runway (@runwayml) March 31, 2025
Runway, which is backed by investors including Salesforce, Google, and Nvidia, offers a suite of AI video tools, including video-generating models like Gen-4. It faces stiff competition in the video generation space, including from OpenAI and Google. But the company has fought to differentiate itself, inking a deal with a major Hollywood studio and earmarking millions of dollars to fund films using AI-generated video.
Runway says that Gen-4 allows users to generate consistent characters across lighting conditions using a reference image of those characters. To craft a scene, users can provide images of subjects and describe the composition of the shot they want to generate.
Using visual references, combined with instructions, Gen-4 allows you to create new images and videos with consistent styles, subjects, locations and more. Allowing for continuity and control within your stories.
To test the model’s narrative capabilities, we have put together… pic.twitter.com/IYz2BaeW2U
— Runway (@runwayml) March 31, 2025
“Gen-4 excels in its ability to generate highly dynamic videos with realistic motion as well as subject, object, and style consistency with superior prompt adherence and best-in-class world understanding,” the company claims in its blog post. “Runway Gen-4 represents a significant milestone in the ability of visual generative models to simulate real-world physics.”
Gen-4, like all video-generating models, was trained on a vast number of examples of videos to “learn” the patterns in these videos to generate new footage. Runway refuses to say where the training data came from, like many vendors these days — partly out of fear of sacrificing competitive advantage. But training details are also a potential source of IP-related lawsuits if Runway trained on copyrighted data without permission.
Runway faces a lawsuit brought by artists against it and other generative AI companies that accuses the defendants of training on copyrighted artwork without permission. Runway argues that the doctrine known as fair use provides legal cover.
The stakes are somewhat high for Runway, which is said to be raising a new round of funding that would value the company at $4 billion. According to The Information, Runway hopes to hit $300 million in annualized revenue this year following the launch of products like an API for its video-generating models.
However the lawsuit against Runway shakes out, generative AI video tools threaten to upend the film and TV industry as we know it. A 2024 study commissioned by the Animation Guild, a union representing Hollywood animators and cartoonists, found that 75% of film production companies that have adopted AI have reduced, consolidated, or eliminated jobs after incorporating the tech. The study also estimates that by 2026, more than 100,000 U.S. entertainment jobs will be disrupted by generative AI.
