Original title: "600 times in 7 days, will AI season 2.0 begin because of this dog?"

Ever since Elon Musk's "crazy praise" for Grok's AI companion made $Ani one of Letsbonk.fun's "Golden Dogs," the market has slowly begun to regain confidence in the AI sector. With pump.fun returning to the top of the "meme launchpad wars," a new AI "Golden Dog"—$SPARK—launched on pump.fun last weekend.

This morning, $SPARK hit a new all-time high of $73 million in market capitalization before retreating somewhat, with its current market capitalization nearing $57.5 million.

So, what exactly is the $SPARK narrative?

Illusion of Life, a company aiming to be the "Disney of AI"

On February 25 of this year, animator Pasquale D'Silva announced that he and AI developer Kevin Fischer co-founded Illusion of Life, and received support from Nabeel Hyatt of Spark Capital.

The name "Life Illusion Company" comes from Walt Disney's famous animation principle - "The Illusion of Life". They want to use the AI technology of this era to make the life of animated characters more full-bodied.

Spark, an animated "AI dog," appeared on animator Pasquale D'Silva's Instagram when Illusion of Life was announced.

On July 19th, animator Pasquale D'Silva posted a short video showing Spark visiting the Logo and Graphic Design Department at Walt Disney Animation Studios:

On July 29, he posted another video of him taking Spark on a private jet. In this video, Spark was very excited, asking to fly the plane and ordering food:

On August 5, Kevin Fischer announced that he would hand over his Twitter account to Spark, making Spark the first entrepreneurial virtual AI. Spark's story will be told by itself.

On that same day, the $SPARK token launched on pump.fun. The eponymous ticker on Bags also briefly surpassed $1 million in market capitalization, but ultimately the one on pump.fun took the cake. Before its takeover, on August 6th, there was an incident where the official Illusion of Life Twitter account announced that they had not created any tokens and had no vested interest in any. This caused $SPARK's market capitalization to plummet from its initial peak of nearly $20 million to below $2 million.

It was not until the early morning of August 9 that Spark himself ran to the $SPARK community to say hello. The trend of $SPARK changed instantly and has been rising ever since.

It can be said that Illusion of Life is an "AI animation company" that created the animated image of Spark, an AI dog, and allowed it to write its own story in reality and on the Internet.

Since animator Pasquale D'Silva had created several other characters in his previous career, and directly mentioned the tickers of two other characters on August 5th, $tanaki and $starby were also hyped.

In addition, he also released a video about littleguy, which caused $littleguy, a project that does not belong to the "Spark universe", to be hyped.

Littleguy is more of an ICM project, creating wearable electronic pets and having secured $1.2 million in funding. The project's founders, noticing the growing interest in crypto, reached out to the founders of pump.fun and Believe.

Conclusion

Overall, the surge in $SPARK certainly gives the impression of ushering in AI Season 2.0. Looking back at the previous AI Season, it was kicked off by AI memes. $SPARK can indeed be categorized as an AI meme, but its narrative is an evolution compared to the first wave. It embodies the vision of an "AI animation company," producing content through proactive engagement with people and things in real life and online, moving beyond the simple Q&A format of an AI companion.

In a video of a visit to the Disney Animation Studios, Spark made the employees laugh. It has its own understanding and emotions, and as Kevin Fischer said, many people have already regarded Sparks as a real creature.

Will this adorable AI dog kick off AI Season 2.0? We'll have to wait and see.

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