The world’s attention is captivated by AI. Whether it’s changing how people and organizations operate, or how they will in the future, AI is shaping what our work culture will look like. As a video agency, our thoughts on AI are nuanced. We see it as a tool – not a replacement. The jury is out on how iterative and creative AI can really be when it comes to content. But we firmly believe that we can utilize compute to help us work smarter, faster and more efficiently, all while expanding the horizon of what we can get done in our day to day. From scriptwriting to post-production, AI can change processes, complement human creativity, and open new doors for creators. Read below and consider these few ways in which AI is making video production simpler.
1. AI-Powered Scriptwriting
Perhaps the most pervasive way we have seen AI permeate the world is through AI written content. AI tools can now help generate script ideas and even write up first drafts. While AI can provide a starting point, it doesn’t mean the next Oscar-winning movie can be written with a few keystrokes typed into OpenAI. There are limitations—the tone of voice may feel robotic, the creativity constrained by data patterns, and subtle nuances or cultural references can be missing. Inconsistent quality may result in more revision time than if you have written the piece yourself in the first place. However, AI can serve as a powerful brainstorming assistant, offering outlines, and dialogue suggestions that speed up the initial phases of scriptwriting.
2. Enhanced Storyboarding
While the visual effects AI produces may not be up to par for full-length features, it can be incredibly useful in the pre-production process. AI tools like Boords.com can help generate storyboards by analyzing scripts and automatically creating visual frames that represent key scenes. This speeds up the pre-production process, allowing creators to visualize the flow of their video without manually sketching out each frame.
3. Automatic Transcription
An AI tool you now see on nearly every video editing platform is automatic transcription, which converts spoken dialogue into text in real time. This feature simplifies the process of creating subtitles and captions, making videos more accessible to audiences with hearing impairments, language barriers, or those watching video content on their phones with the sound off while on the go. Beyond accessibility, automatic transcription can enhance search by generating searchable text-based content.
4. Visual Effects (To Some Extent)
There’s still an uncanny nature to most artificially rendered videos—human hair and skin that’s a little too smoothed out, hands with a few extra fingers, camera movements that start to look familiar across all AI videos. Despite these imperfections, AI continues to make inroads in visual effects and graphic creation, as seen in this whimsical rendering of whales and butterflies in the sky from OpenAI’s sora. AI-driven tools like Final Cut Pro’s magnetic mask and Adobe Premiere’s generative extend are already being used for tasks in post production. These tools help streamline labor-intensive processes, freeing up human editors to focus on storytelling and other complex aspects of post-production.
5. Audio Clean-up
When it comes to audio, transcription isn’t the only AI tool that can be powerful. Audio engineers are essential to creating a video with professional audio quality. But some environments are simply too noisy. AI tools can help clean up those noisy areas and isolate the audio you need to tell your story. Busy streets or the roar of a crowd are concerns of the past with some of the available audio studios and tools you can find online like Descript and Riverside.fm. Additionally, AI Voice cloning can be a powerful, low cost tool when ADR isn’t an option. Busy clients who need that extra line of dialogue can still get what they need out of the storytelling without having to find an audio post-production recording facility.
6. Increasing Video Skepticism
In the same way that we would not necessarily trust a written statement without fact-checking the sources, we will soon need to begin questioning videos for authenticity. Captured footage has often been considered “proof” of an event, but now we are entering murkier territory where AI-generated deepfakes and manipulated content are becoming more convincing. As AI tools for video creation become more advanced, distinguishing real footage from fake will become increasingly difficult. This shift underscores the need for new verification tools and media literacy to help audiences separate the real from the fake.
