Layer AI

Layer AI is an AI-powered creative production platform designed primarily for game studios, game developers, artists, producers, marketing teams, and other creative organizations. Rather than focusing on a single type of generative content, Layer brings image, video, 3D, audio, and game-related creative production into one workspace. The platform is designed to help teams generate, refine, organize, and deploy creative assets while maintaining consistency across projects and production workflows.

Layer describes itself as a creative AI platform for game studios and creative teams. Users can describe what they want in natural language and use Layer’s assistant to generate and refine content. The platform supports assets such as concept art, icons, key art, user-interface graphics, logos, marketing creatives, animated gameplay clips, character animations, 3D props, meshes, textures, and audio.

The company, Layer AI, Inc., was founded in July 2023 by Volkan Gurel and Burcu Hakguder. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California, with team members distributed across several locations. Layer’s stated customer base includes more than 400 studios and more than 10,000 artists, producers, and growth professionals. The company identifies game studios such as Zynga, King, SciPlay, Huuuge, Tripledot, Socialpoint, Big Fish, and Light & Wonder among its notable clients.

One of Layer’s defining characteristics is its model-agnostic approach. Instead of developing and promoting one proprietary generation model, Layer provides access to hundreds of AI models through a unified platform. Its current documentation describes access to more than 500 generative AI models covering image, video, 3D, and audio generation. This allows teams to select different models depending on the type of asset, visual style, quality requirements, or production task.

For image generation, Layer can be used for concept art, game characters, environments, icons, UI assets, logos, marketing graphics, and other visual content. Users can work from text prompts as well as reference materials. The platform also supports capabilities such as image editing, inpainting, style transfer, reference images, and custom style training.

Custom style training is particularly relevant to game studios that need visual consistency. Teams can train custom styles based on their existing creative direction and use those styles when generating new assets. This can help teams maintain a recognizable visual identity across characters, environments, marketing materials, and other assets.

Layer also extends beyond static images. Its video-generation capabilities can produce animated gameplay concepts, character animations, advertising creatives, and other short-form video content. The platform supports multiple video models and provides workflows for creating and refining video assets. Layer’s current documentation also describes video generation and processing as part of its unified API.

Three-dimensional content is another important part of Layer. Teams can generate 3D objects, props, meshes, and textures from prompts or reference images. This can be useful during game-development preproduction, concept development, prototyping, and asset creation.

Audio generation is also included. Layer provides access to AI audio models, allowing teams to create audio content alongside their visual assets. This makes the platform broader than a conventional AI image generator because multiple creative modalities can be handled within the same workspace.

Layer’s workflow system is another major component. Instead of repeatedly performing individual creative operations manually, teams can build multi-step workflows that chain different actions together. For example, a workflow might generate an image, upscale it, remove its background, and prepare the resulting asset for another production step. These workflows can also be called through Layer’s API, making them useful for automation and production pipelines.

The platform also provides an AI agent designed to act more like a creative collaborator than a simple prompt box. Layer describes its agent as being able to remember preferences and house style across sessions and delegate tasks to specialist sub-agents. These capabilities are intended to help teams manage larger creative-production processes rather than simply generate individual images.

For advertising and user-acquisition teams, Layer has a particular focus on game marketing. The platform supports creative production for campaigns and playable-style advertising. Layer says its platform can generate playable-style video advertisements, while generated playable HTML games and ads remain in development.

Layer is also designed for collaboration. Rather than charging separately for every person added to a workspace, its current pricing model allows teams to add users without per-seat fees. This can make it practical for studios where artists, producers, marketers, reviewers, and other team members need to participate in the same creative workspace.

The platform includes an asset-management environment where teams can organize generated content, reference materials, models, and projects. This helps transform AI generation from an isolated experimentation tool into part of a repeatable production system.

Layer also provides integrations with established creative software and development environments. The company says Layer works inside applications including Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Figma, and Chrome, while its developer platform provides a REST API and MCP server.

For developers, Layer provides programmatic access to its generation capabilities. Its API supports image, video, 3D, and audio generation, while workflows can be executed through API endpoints. The platform also provides a command-line interface and JavaScript/TypeScript SDK. The official documentation explains that the REST API can be accessed from any programming language capable of making HTTP requests.

Layer’s MCP server also allows the platform to connect with compatible AI agents and development environments. The company announced MCP support alongside its public API, allowing users to connect Layer with applications such as Claude and other MCP-compatible tools.

Pricing is based on Creative Units, or CUs. Instead of charging a separate seat fee for each user, Layer charges according to the amount of creative work generated. Different generations consume different amounts of CUs depending on factors such as the modality, model, resolution, duration, and computational requirements.

Layer currently offers a free starting experience, Studio subscriptions, and Enterprise arrangements. The platform’s pricing documentation states that subscriptions can start at $10 per month for 300 Creative Units, while additional recurring units can be purchased at $60 per 1,000 CUs. One-time 500-unit packs are also available for $40.

Enterprise customers receive additional organizational capabilities such as advanced permissions, SSO, SCIM provisioning, SOC 2 Type II compliance, custom data retention, audit logs, flexible procurement, and dedicated support.

Another important feature is usage monitoring. Layer provides dashboards showing how Creative Units are being consumed by model, modality, user, and date range. Teams can also export usage information as CSV files, which can be useful for budgeting and production management.

Layer’s security offering is aimed at professional and enterprise teams. The company states that customer data is not used to train foundation models and that its enterprise environment includes SOC 2 Type II certification, SSO, SCIM, role-based access controls, and audit capabilities.

Overall, Layer AI is positioned less as a general-purpose consumer image generator and more as an AI-powered creative production environment for game development and commercial creative teams. Its combination of multiple AI models, multimodal generation, custom styles, workflows, collaboration, integrations, API access, and enterprise controls makes it particularly relevant to organizations producing large quantities of game and marketing assets.

Pricing and Review

Layer uses a consumption-based pricing model built around Creative Units (CUs) rather than traditional per-seat pricing. The free experience allows users to explore the platform, while paid Studio subscriptions provide Creative Units for regular production. Layer states that subscriptions start at $10/month for 300 CUs, with recurring packages increasing by $60 per 1,000 CUs. One-time 500-CU packs are available for $40.

Enterprise pricing is customized and is designed for larger organizations requiring advanced security, administration, governance, procurement, and support. Enterprise customers can receive features such as SOC 2 Type II compliance, SAML/OIDC-based SSO, SCIM, advanced permissions, audit logs, custom data retention, and dedicated support.

Layer’s main strength is its breadth. It combines image, video, 3D, and audio generation with custom style training, workflows, asset management, integrations, APIs, and AI-agent functionality. This makes it more appropriate for production teams than a basic standalone image generator.

The main consideration is its consumption-based pricing. Because different models and generation settings use different amounts of Creative Units, costs can vary substantially between simple image generations and resource-intensive video or 3D work. Teams producing large quantities of content therefore need to monitor CU consumption carefully.

For game studios and creative teams that need to generate and manage many different types of assets, Layer provides a unified production environment rather than requiring separate AI services for each modality.