Getting digitally cloned was easier than Devin Finley expected it to be. The voice-over artist, who also works as a model and bar manager, entered a studio in Manhattan last spring and read a script from a teleprompter. Across the room, a man with a large camera working for Hour One, a Tel Aviv–based video agency specializing in providing clients with lifelike virtual humans, filmed Finley from the waist up. Over Zoom, a director offered instructions about how much to move his hands. He was done in less than an hour.

Technology and visual effects startup Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies (MARZ) has raised $5.3 million in Series A funding. The investment was led by Round13 Captial with participation from Rhino Ventures and Harlo Equity Partners. MARZ plans to use the funding to grow its core VFX business and accelerate the development of its'AI for VFX' technology solutions. The Toronto-based studio launched in 2018 and is developing AI solutions that aim to address some of the challenges faced by the entertainment industry regarding VFX capacity shortage spurred by streaming wars, the corresponding explosion of on-demand content and the importance of VFX in driving subscriber growth. "We will use the funds to accelerate research and development of our'AI for VFX' solutions, of which there are two AI products currently in development," MARZ co-founder and co-president Jonathan Bronfman told TechCrunch in an email.