Karim Youssef

Luxembourg, Star Wars and anime

Karim Youssef grew up in Luxembourg on The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and then anime, and wanted to study 3D design^[1]. His mum told him to learn something that would get him a real job, so he took his creativity into marketing instead, while making small things in Blender and Unreal Engine on the side^[1]. 3D, he found, needs years in every discipline, from character design to rigging and animation, which you cannot master as a hobby^[1]. In 2023 he wrote that one vision, carried for about fifteen years, had first made him want to learn video editing, which led him to 3D design and finally to generative AI^[28].

LinkedIn lists digital marketing roles in Luxembourg from 2015, including at the property portal Wortimmo.lu, and from 2016 a role as chief marketing and business development officer at Depixit, the company behind Neon Internet and LetzAI^[18][16]. With Misch Strotz he co-founded Neon Internet, a Luxembourg marketing and technology agency, where he is CMO and where he wrote the concepts for campaigns^[17][15][1]. LinkedIn dates the agency to 2018 and the Paperjam company guide to 2019^[18][17].

A once in a lifetime shot

When AI came out, that was the moment when I realised this might be your once in a lifetime shot.

Karim Youssef^[1]

His first public AI work came in April 2023: Ghosts of Neo Tokyo, a short prototype made by animating Midjourney stills, towards a hybrid of manga and anime he called animanga^[28]. The same week he posted Stable Diffusion tutorials on ControlNet, EbSynth and TemporalKit; the TemporalKit one is still his second most watched YouTube video, at about 31,000 views^[29][3].

In July 2023 he and Misch Strotz launched LetzAI, an AI image platform built in Luxembourg, which opened to a wider audience that September and went into public beta in December^[15][20][21]. LetzAI's own press page calls him co-founder and CMO in one place and co-founder and creative director in another^[16]. His films started, he says, as a way to promote the platform and to stay on top of the tools^[1].

The trailers came quickly. YUKO, in August 2023, was made with Midjourney images animated in Runway and Pika, with an ElevenLabs voice^[10]. Mugen No Ame and TITAN followed, TITAN being his first with Magnific upscaling^[41][30]. In February 2024 he made Fall From Grace, a Formula 1 drama, with Gil Galvao and Julie Wieland in 48 hours for Runway's GEN:48, and returned to the competition that September with The Bell^[25][27]. CRONUS, a 2024 short about sentient robots made with LetzAI, Luma, Udio and ElevenLabs, was his longest film at the time, and the 2025 Black Sun trailer took two months of daily work^[26][8].

Live-action anime

In November 2025, when Nano Banana came out, Karim recreated 13 seconds of Chainsaw Man in live action with LetzAI and the original sound design, to practise directing and scene building without having to invent a world first^[9][1]. It became his first viral video: a million views on Instagram very quickly, about a million on X by his account, and more again when it spread in Japan^[1]. Salma, whom he credits with the advice, had told him to double down on whatever works, so he did^[1]. Invincible, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer's Akaza, Naruto and Jujutsu Kaisen 0 followed, and five of those reels, Chainsaw Man included, have passed a million views on Instagram^[12].

In June 2026 he worked with PJ Ace on Nexus: Wet Markets of Kafar, a five-minute teaser for PJ Ace's hybrid feature made by three people in two weeks, with Karim credited for additional images and animation^[14][13]. The Instagram collaboration post has passed 21.7 million views^[13]. On AI LIVE he put his share at about 80 hours and hundreds of thousands of credits^[36]. It is also where he met Steven Quach^[1].

A story with no faces

Black Sun, released on 31 March 2026, is his first original short film^[7]. He made it when ByteDance gave him early access to Seedance 2.0, which at first blocked any image with a face, so the story of masked riders, giant spider mounts and a black sphere over the dunes is told without one^[1][7]. He treats it as a training exercise in what the model could do, and in world building^[1].

If you don't put in extra effort, it will not look extra good.

Karim Youssef^[1]

THOLIN

THOLIN is the story he had carried longest. A big part of YUKO is THOLIN, he says; that 2023 trailer was the first time he had the idea for the character^[1]. Steven Quach, a Vietnamese American traditional filmmaker who wanted to learn AI, had told Karim to call him if he ever had a project. Both had two free weeks, and used them^[1]. They went through 13 versions of the script and moved the story from the Philippines to Vietnam, so Steven could draw on real stories and culture^[1].

Episode 01, eight minutes long and made with Seedance 2.0 via LetzAI, came out on 24 June 2026^[6]. In a future Hanoi, Ana salvages implants from the dead beneath a tattoo shop, until a man on her table turns out to be alive, with an unknown substance growing towards his brain stem^[23]. Karim wrote the opening track in Suno over days of iterations and AI LIVE's Chris Branch remastered it^[1][37]. In August it became the first title in LetzAI Originals, a screening room for films made on the platform that Karim curates with Misch Strotz^[22].

Voyager 7

Voyager 7 was his entry to the Future Vision XPRIZE, a competition from the XPRIZE Foundation, Google and Range for optimistic science fiction^[5]. He had forgotten the deadline until it came up at the Dor Brothers' house the weekend before, and he and Steven made it in six days^[1]. The idea is an old one of his: if humans ever meet aliens, it will probably be through our technology, so the explorers are machines built in our image^[1][5]. AI LIVE's hosts reported that it had passed half a million views on X before Ep. 129^[38]. He entered for exposure rather than to win, and was approached as a result; that is now the main project he is working on, which has not been named publicly^[1].

If we're talking about the future, it's not for us. We're relatively old when we're talking about the future. It's more for the kids and the world that they will grow up in.

Karim Youssef^[1]

Dishonorable, viral twice

In September 2026 he finally had a weekend to play with AI anime, and made Dishonorable, a Star Wars duel on a red desert world, with Seedream 5 Pro and Seedance 2.5 via LetzAI and video credits from Dreamina^[45][4]. His own post on X barely moved. Then an account with about 200 followers reposted it without credit and reached hundreds of thousands of people, and Karim's complaint about that went viral too^[1]. On Instagram his two posts of the film have passed a million views between them, and the YouTube upload, at 233,000 views, is his most watched video^[12][4].

He sees Star Wars as culture rather than just IP: a red lightsaber means a Sith, and he doesn't need to explain anything else^[1]. AI LIVE screened the film on Ep. 132, and Karim was the guest on Creator Sessions #10 the next day, the first AI LIVE session ever streamed live on Instagram^[40][1].

How he works

Karim puts nothing in his films that cannot be done on LetzAI, with Dreamina's partner credits on Dishonorable the one exception, and says the platform only carries models he would use himself^[1]. Base images come from Seedream 5, cheap enough to iterate for hours; he edits in Nano Banana and avoids GPT Image 2 because of a pattern it leaves^[1]. Every reaction on screen is prompted, written from inside the character's head^[1]. He scores almost everything in Suno and licenses human-made music from Musicbed when the music has to lead, because in his view music is half of every video^[1].

His rules are simple. Practise on scenes you love. Don't fight the AI, apart from one or two brute-forced flex shots an episode. Keep to two or three projects at once. Rewatch a film many times, and shorten the shots you love most. And first make something worth promoting^[1].

What's next

Reposts on his LinkedIn list him as a judge for the Lisbon edition of the live AI Creative Challenge, run by Clube da Criatividade de Portugal with Google and The One Club for Creativity, at Unicorn Stage in the Beato Innovation District on 13 November 2026^[18]. In a post he reshared, Misch Strotz says LetzAI is co-sponsoring the FILMAKERS.AI FILMHACK in Berlin that same weekend, with Karim on site to guide filmmakers. Both are listed for the same date, so one plan may change^[18]. His X profile reads Luxembourg/Lisbon, and Lisbon is where AI LIVE's Chris Branch first met him^[19][36].