London-based startup Camera Intelligence (formerly Alice Camera) is trailing Caira, a MagSafe-equipped Micro Four Thirds camera for iPhone that integrates Google’s Nano Banana generative-AI model for real-time, on-camera editing.
Back in September, it was announced that a London-based start-up, Camera Intelligence (formerly Alice Camera) had managed to attract $2 million in seed funding to help bring its new camera to the market. That project must have been fairly well underway already, as the company has now announced that Caira, its first product, will launch on Kickstarter on October 30.
A press release announcing a forthcoming Kickstarter is a bit much, though very on brand for AI at the moment. That said, the camera definitely looks to have some interesting features if the company can bring them to market in the promised timeframe.
Caira has arisen from the ashes of Alice Camera: an AI-assisted Micro Four Thirds camera that attaches to smartphones but was announced in 2020 and took long enough to get to market that the industry changed considerably in that time. 'Ashes' might be a strong word, but there's some definite uncertainty about the state of the Alice camera project; its socials have closed down even though it still seems to be accepting pre-orders and you can buy one from B&H.
So, caveat emptor and all that.
Caira, meanwhile, is billed as a new AI-native Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera that attaches to iPhones via a MagSafe connector. It is also trailed as the world’s first interchangeable lens mirrorless camera to feature Google’s next-generation generative AI model, Nano Banana , integrated directly into its product.
It also features a MFT mount and an image sensor said to be 400% bigger than the iPhone's.
Camera Intelligence says it is designing ethical system prompts and safeguards within the AI model to prevent misuse. The pitch though is about using natural language prompts users to instantly change the style or colour grade of a scene or make hyper-specific additions, such as changing the colour of a subject’s clothing or hair directly within the Caira app after the photo has been taken.
This, says the company, will help to usher in a new era of on-camera generative editing, "...moving beyond simple capture to offer in-the-moment creation and editing, for spectacular real-time adjustments that were previously only possible through complex post-production software and workflows on laptops."
It will be interesting to find out more about how this all works, how the company envisages people using it, and the likely business model and cost for the use of genAI credits once the Kickstarter gets going.
The Caira camera is currently slated for a 2026 debut at a sub-$1000 price point. It's planned to go live on Kickstarter on October 30, with early bird prices around $795. The company is also currently taking non-refundable $50 deposits now for a $695 eventual final price.