Mischief 1: an AI video model shaped by lab-grown brain cells, at half a cent a second
Quick answer
On Oct 30, 2026, San Francisco startup The Biological Computing Co. (TBC) launched mischief 1, an image-to-video AI model it calls the first publicly available “neuron-derived” model (TBC). It’s built on the open Wan 2.2 video model, and TBC says it generates video 5x faster at the same quality because of efficiencies it found by studying living neurons. Price starts at $0.005 per second of video, so a 5-second clip costs 2.5 cents. The neurons stay in TBC’s lab; your prompts run on ordinary AI chips. TBC hasn’t published independent benchmarks yet (The Next Web).
The facts
- What it does: turns a starting image plus a prompt into a short clip. OpenRouter’s listing supports 3- and 5-second 16:9 clips (Unite.AI).
- Where: live on fal and OpenRouter, plus TBC’s own app (TBC).
- Price: from $0.005/second at 480p and $0.01/second at 720p on OpenRouter; 100 five-second clips at the base rate cost $2.50 (Unite.AI).
- The brain-cell part: TBC encodes problems as electrical signals, measures how lab-grown neuron networks respond, and turns the patterns it finds into a small software add-on. It adds less than 0.1% to the base model’s parameters (TBC).
- What it isn’t: no living cells process your request. “The neurons stay in the lab,” TBC says.
What’s not proven yet
- The 5x speed and “same quality” claims are TBC’s own. It hasn’t published an independent, reproducible comparison against Wan 2.2 (Unite.AI; The Next Web).
- TBC says it’s working on language and “physical AI” models next. That’s a plan, not a product.
Why it matters
- Most AI speedups come from bigger chips or smarter math. TBC is betting biology can point to cheaper ways to compute. If the claims hold up, cheaper video generation is the first test.
- For creators: at 2.5 cents a clip, trying lots of takes gets cheap. Check the quality yourself before you build on it.
FAQ
- Does it use real brain cells? In research, yes. The product is ordinary software on standard AI hardware.
- Is it free? No. It’s pay-per-second on fal and OpenRouter, starting at half a cent per second.
- Is it really 5x faster? That’s the company’s claim; no independent benchmark has been published yet.