There’s no question about the value of using video content on your website and social pages. Video dominates the internet, representing about 80% of online content. And the demand for video continues to grow.
Even the most prolific brands are struggling to produce enough video content for their sales and social channels. AI video generators are a new solution to this problem, and they’re gaining a lot of traction with major brands.
These video creation services use artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate videos without the need for a crew, actors, or complex editing software. Just plug in an article or a script along with some information about your brand, and with a click, you can generate an engaging video ready to post on your site or social media.
But AI isn’t always reliable, and the value these services provide is often misunderstood.
AI video clips are not a replacement for creating engaging video content. But, they can assist some in your content efforts, allowing you to cut costs and maintain a robust content creation schedule.
Below, we’ll give you a peek at the different types of AI video generation and recommend how to use them effectively in product videos.
AI-Generated Video Creators for Product Videos
There are three types of AI-video generators that are gaining popularity among marketers. Each has different potential uses. We sum them up as the following:
Text-to-Video AI
These AI video tools analyze text and match it with images and clips taken from stock libraries. For example, you can copy/paste an entire article on “How to Bake a Cake,” into the tool and the AI will create a video using stock footage and text overlays. You can also add music to these engaging slide-show-style videos.
If the AI doesn’t get it just right, you can edit the text or swap out content from millions of stock photos and videos.
This is not the most sophisticated video creation technology, but it’s great for turning listicles and informative articles into videos. You can also add your own media to create product announcements and shareable product listings. Even if you don’t use the entire AI-generated video, you can cherry-pick clips or use templates to gain free video effects for your product videos. Check out designs.ai to see a text-to-video AI generator in action.
Text-to-Avatar AI
Text-to-Avatar AI turns any text into a script spoken by an on-screen AI avatar. These avatars look and sound just like real people, allowing you to “create” an actor instead of hiring one.
The most popular AI avatar video generator is synthesia.io, which has over 50 avatars to choose from. You can also select templates and modify on-screen text and images to match your brand.
To add your product, simply upload images you want to include and edit them into the video. The avatar can remain on one side of the screen, in a bubble, or in the background while you feature your product. Take a look at an example here.
This AI tool requires a bit more editing to make branded content, but it can save you loads on hiring live actors and voiceover actors. We recommended it for creating case studies and product explainers.
AI Animation
AI-generated animated videos can be highly engaging on your website and social media pages. Just input a script and add a bit of information about your brand, and tools like Raw Shorts will generate an AI animation that would have taken hundreds of human hours to animate and edit.
Once the animation has been generated, you can use a simple editor to swap images and text until everything looks the way you want it to. Then, tweak the music and voiceover to find your unique tone.
Animated videos take a bit of time to get just right, but compared to creating your own animations, they are lightning-fast to produce. We recommend using them for explainers and landing page videos.
How to Make Engaging Product Videos Using AI
Here are some tips on how to use the above tools in your video marketing campaigns.
Upgrade Your Explainers: AI video generators are limited in their scope, but they can produce high-quality product/service explainers in record time. This can massively benefit your brand, as 85% of consumers are more likely to convert after seeing an explainer video.
Use AI Avatars to Build Trust: When consumers see human faces in videos, they tend to trust the content more. Use AI to add an extra dimension of empathy to your videos without hiring an actor. It may be enough to have an avatar appear on screen for just a few seconds at the beginning and end of your video.
Use AI with a Green Screen: AI video generators are good at auto-selecting stock video content that matches your brand, and they have millions of videos and images to choose from. You may be able to optimize your video production considerably by using AI to help generate green screen footage or background animations.
Boost your Social Media Presence: Your social media audiences are extremely demanding when it comes to video content. Creating a few AI-generated videos a week to accompany your human-generated content can help you keep up with consumers’ content demands.
Blend AI with Real Video Production: There’s nothing wrong with exporting AI videos and then cutting them up with a video editor. In fact, you will probably need to do this if you want to showcase your products creatively. Don’t compromise; take what you can from AI and fill in the cracks with high-quality human production—or vice versa.
Use AI to Improve Product Videos—But Don’t Become a Machine
AI video generators are valuable tools for making quality videos at a fraction of the cost. But remember that AI isn’t an end-all for video creation. It just gives your current efforts a boost. Trying to bend AI to your will may result in perceivably poor and disingenuous content, damaging your brand.
You still need to be creative when using AI-generated videos, and you won’t be able to click the Quit button on that editing software just yet. Capitalize on the limited strengths of AI while maintaining your current standards of quality and you should be able to trim your costs and increase output.