The co-founders who encouraged shoppers to buy Canadian with grocery-scanning app Maple Scan have launched a new startup, focused on ushering in a new era of AI that’s more interactive than a standard chatbot conversation.
“The way we actually use [AI] has barely moved, and history says whoever closes that gap is who defines the era.”
Daniel Wigdor, AXL
Liquid Interactive, co-founded by Sasha Ivanov and Ben Pearman, came out of stealth on Tuesday morning with the launch of its Liquid Photos product and $700,000 CAD from Toronto-based venture studio AXL. The startup is developing patented technology to make photos, online demos, and visual assets more interactive. Its ultimate goal is to move beyond the way many people currently interact with AI: typing words into a text box and waiting for a long, verbose response.
“When we compare [text chatting] to other experiences online and in our lives, like video-based platforms on social media, it’s a lot less engaging and interesting,” Ivanov said in an interview with BetaKit. “There’s a lot we’re losing when we stick to text only.”
Liquid Interactive is launching with its first consumer app, Liquid Photos. The AI system pulls in photos you select from your camera roll and adds features to transform them into dynamic visual assets with generative AI. For example, a set of photos taken at the same place, around the same time, can appear connected in space and be rotated around in three dimensions despite the source photo being in two dimensions. Another feature can take an object and split it apart into its visual components so users can navigate its different parts. The company hopes to launch Liquid Photos on the App Store soon, but it’s currently available in beta to Apple and Android users.
For Ivanov, the current AI moment mirrors the advent of photography. “As people started to understand the medium and the new things they could do with it, it gave rise to things like film and cinematography,” he said.
Liquid Interactive is being incubated at AXL, a venture studio co-founded by University of Toronto professors that hopes to launch 50 AI startups in five years out of Canada.
Daniel Wigdor, AXL’s co-founder and CEO, wrote in an email to BetaKit that Liquid Interactive is an example of a startup using AI to “empower people to do what previously was impossible.”
“Today, AI can create bespoke experiences with deep understanding of the user, their understanding, their goals, their ways of seeing the world. And yet, the way we actually use it has barely moved, and history says whoever closes that gap is who defines the era,” he wrote.
Maple Scan, Ivanov and Pearman’s previous venture, notched more than 130,000 downloads amid the buy-Canadian frenzy that saw consumers shun American products amid an ongoing trade war. The app, which they created more as a consumer service than a for-profit business, is still operational, but they’re not focused on scaling it up.
Liquid Interactive’s launch comes as AI-generated visual content—from political ads to product photoshoots—has flooded the internet. The proliferation of these tools has raised concerns about impacts on workers: A 2026 report by the Future Skills Centre found that demand for entry-level and freelance creative labour may be reduced, as using AI to produce visual assets could create cost savings.
But Ivanov said Liquid Interactive isn’t trying to replicate and cut costs for what humans can already do. Instead, it wants to use AI to help make new ways to generate digital visuals, and “a creative team is an inherent part of that.”
“Our belief is that as content gets easier to generate, human judgement and direction become more valuable, not less, because someone still has to decide what is worth making and what is actually good,” he told BetaKit in an email. “We’re interested in putting power into the hands of the people doing those entry-level jobs to create art that would previously have been out of reach.”
He and Pearman hope to eventually sell their technology to operating system providers like Apple, and have their features incorporated into camera roll apps. They’re also demoing with brands that want their online stores and product rooms to be more interactive, for example, integrating product info and allowing users to navigate 3D video assets of products they are shopping for, with real-life product info involved.
Ivanov added that they work with a brand’s pre-existing assets, which were created by the company’s photography and graphic design team, then build on top of that.
“Our goal right now is to work with as many brands as possible to really test this out and get it into people’s hands,” Ivanov said.
Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by David Veksler.