Decart has launched Lucy 2.5, an upgrade to its real-time AI video model that edits live video from natural-language prompts with sub-40-millisecond latency. Announced on July 15, 2026, Lucy 2.5 lets creators swap characters, restyle backgrounds, and add or remove objects in a running video feed, plus a new VFX engine for cinema-style effects like explosions, smoke, and wind.
Try It: Restyle a Live Feed in Real Time
Point a webcam or video source at Lucy 2.5 through the Decart API and type an instruction like "make this a neon cyberpunk street" or "add falling snow." The model rewrites each frame as you move, so the edit is live rather than queued behind a render. For livestreamers and short-form creators, that means green-screen-free background replacement and virtual try-on without a post-production pass.
Why It Matters for Creators
Most AI video tools still work in batches: submit a clip, wait, download. Real-time video-to-video collapses that loop, turning editing into a live performance. Decart's demo shows character swaps and cinema-style VFX applied to a running stream. If you produce streams, ads, or interactive content, real-time editing removes the render wait that has kept generative video out of live workflows. Our coverage of open-source AI video editors shows how fast this category is expanding.
Key Details
Latency: Sub-40 milliseconds per frame, per Decart's launch announcement.
Capabilities: Character swapping, style and background editing, real-time object add and remove, a new VFX engine (explosions, fireballs, smoke, dust, wind), dynamic product placement, and virtual try-on.
Access: Available now through the Decart API.
Improvement: Higher accuracy and prompt adherence than Lucy 2.0, with fewer visual artifacts.
What to Do Next
If you work in live video, test Lucy 2.5 on a single effect such as background replacement and measure whether the sub-40ms latency holds at your resolution. Creators comparing generation-first tools like ByteDance Seedance 2.5 should note that Lucy targets a different job: editing an existing live feed, not generating clips from text.
