[2024 Seoul Center for Creative Economy & Innovation Industry-Tailored Selected Company Interview ⑥]
Geonho Lee, Researcher, SFACSPACE Education Business Division
Beyond simple image editing to realizing creative spatial design
Highly praised for self-developed core graphics technology...with powerful scalability as well

This article was conducted with companies selected for the 2024 Industry-Tailored Innovation Voucher Support Program. This program is a digital transformation support project that aims to practically accelerate digital transformation and secure in-house digital execution capabilities for companies with demand for AI-based digital transformation. The project is run by the Ministry of Science and ICT; for three consecutive years since 2022, the National IT Industry Promotion Agency has been dedicated to it, and the Seoul Center for Creative Economy & Innovation (hereinafter, the “Seoul Center”) has overseen it, with LG AI Research participating this year as a partner institution.

The remarkable advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology is changing many parts of our lives. In particular, in the field of image and video processing, the changes brought by AI stand out even more. Advanced image and video editing tasks, once the exclusive domain of experts, can now be done easily by anyone.

One of the startups leading this change is SFACSPACE. Based on its self-developed AI and vision processing technologies, the company provides innovative solutions across various areas, including image editing and 3D model generation. It also contributes to training future talent so that AI technologies can rapidly spread across industries.

We met with the fast-growing startup SFACSPACE to discuss the know-how it gained through the Innovation Voucher Support Program and the company’s future vision. This is an interview with Researcher Geonho Lee of SFACSPACE, a company selected for the Seoul Center for Creative Economy & Innovation’s industry-tailored program.

Q. What kind of business does your company do?

Our company is SFACSPACE (Sfacspace), a company specializing in AI technology. The company name contains two meanings: “Sfac” and “Space.” “Space” means physical space, and it also means creating things for the future. “Sfac” means creating new specs/credentials for people. That is why we also operate an IT education brand called “Sniper Factory.” We provide services through which a wide range of people—including teenagers, young adults, and incumbent workers—can learn IT and how to apply it in industry.

Q. What are your flagship products or services?

Based on our expertise in AI/SW technology, we focus on DX projects through our IT Development Division and IT Education Division, including customized training by target group and AI solution adoption. The IT Development Division provides the “Noisiv” platform based on computer vision technology (equipped with Nosiv-Eddie, a 2D image editing solution, and Noisiv-NeRFy, a 3D image reconstruction solution) as its flagship service, while the IT Education Division provides diverse educational services essential to DX transformation through the education brand “Sniper Factory.”

Noisiv, the core service of the IT Development Division, is an anagram of Vision and is a technology project that service-enables the computer vision technology our company possesses. Currently, our AI image editing solution Eddie has been completed and is in service, and we have released a beta version of NeRFy, a NeRF-based 3D image reconstruction solution that can turn 2D images into 3D, while accelerating R&D through multiple research projects.

Sniper Factory, operated by the IT Education Division, is based on our AI/SW technical expertise and provides life-cycle customized training programs for fostering IT talent—from youth to job seekers/aspiring entrepreneurs and incumbent workers—through programs such as the Industry-Tailored Innovation Voucher, KDT (K-digital Training), the Youth Employment Academy Saessak, the Digital Saessak program hosted by the Korea Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Creativity, and the Future Tomorrow Youth Work Experience Support Program.

Q. Please introduce your core technologies.

The core technologies applied to our flagship item, NOISIV-Inpaint, are as follows. ▲Object Detection: Uses Faster R-CNN technology to accurately identify and classify various objects in images. ▲Image Segmentation: Through SAM (Segment Anything Model), it performs detailed object separation even in complex backgrounds, enabling precise detection of boundaries in high-resolution images. ▲Image Inpainting: Uses LaMa (Large Masked Autoencoder) to naturally restore damaged or missing parts of images and generate highly complete outputs.

NOISIV-Inpaint enables efficient image editing in various fields such as design, content production, and real estate. We have implemented a highly portable solution form that can be easily adopted across diverse domains.

In addition to developing these solutions, our company is also attempting expansion into 3D spatial reconstruction and restoration technologies through research on NeRF (Neural Radiance Fields)-based image processing technology. As part of this technology development, we accelerated development last year through a Korea Creative Content Agency R&D project (Hongik University–Westworld Consortium). Through this, we are expanding the potential to produce more vivid images more efficiently.

Q. What do you think is your company’s competitiveness?

Many of the technologies used in Noisiv are provided as solutions. Among them, Eddie is a LaMa-based inpainting AI and is evaluated as a very high-level image inpainting model even for high-resolution images. It has an editor built in, and it can even perform auto-detection (automatic detection), which recognizes objects and automatically masks them without manually painting masks. Noisiv has various computer vision processing programs built in, giving it broad scalability so it can be deployed whenever companies need specific solutions.

Our company has filed 19 patents related to computer vision-centered AI (15 domestic, 4 overseas), obtained innovative-growth-type venture certification, and had its external technical capabilities verified. Since 2022, we have been selected for three consecutive years as an AI/data technology supplier company under the Ministry of Science and ICT and have been carrying out related projects.

Our company is currently operating the business without investment and does not have a separate investment attraction plan. We plan to remain self-sustaining while maintaining the current situation, though we are open to receiving investment if good proposals come in.

Going forward, our company plans to continue leading technological innovation by providing spatial reconstruction and image processing solutions across various industries through AI and computer vision technologies.

Q. What led you to participate in the “Innovation Voucher Support Program”?

Our company has participated in the Innovation Voucher Support Program for three years. Since we mainly provide IT education-related services and also develop AI solutions, our goal is to help demand companies make good use of them. In particular, we strive to provide the education and training companies need for digital transformation (DX) not merely as education, but in ways that can be applied to actual services. Going forward, we will continue introducing innovative technologies to meet industry needs and deliver better results.

Q. Did you gain any valuable insights while collaborating with demand companies?

The best part of collaborating with demand companies was their strong willingness to apply technology not only for education but also for practical business needs. For example, when cooperating with Red Slippers, while developing an AI service to help long-tail musicians grow effectively, our company also gained many insights in IT education-related areas. It was a great opportunity not only with demand companies but also internally for our company to gain ideas on how to operate programs more efficiently.

Q. What do you think is the biggest effect of the Innovation Voucher Support Program?

This program does not simply provide education; it supports the process of creating real projects. Startups and SMEs especially have limits in resources and manpower, but through this support program, being able to do A to Z—from consulting to actual solution provision—is extremely useful. I think it is a very attractive program for companies that have technical gaps or are just beginning digital transformation.