Every other advert in my feed this week was made by AI. Some of it was genuinely good. A lot of it was the same glossy, slightly-off stuff we’ve all started to spot on sight.
So let me cut through the hype. AI video is useful. It isn’t magic, and it isn’t about to put every camera operator out of work. The whole trick is knowing what to hand over to it and what to keep doing the old way.
What It’s Genuinely Good At
Short, simple, visual clips. That’s the sweet spot.
Need a product spinning slowly on a clean background? A looping shot of coffee being poured? A five-second scene to open a social post? AI handles those in minutes, for next to nothing. The kind of filler footage that used to cost a small business a full day of work is now almost free.
It’s also great for testing ideas. Instead of committing to one expensive video, you can knock out a handful of versions, see which one people actually respond to, and bin the rest. That used to be a luxury only big brands could afford.
Where It Falls Flat
Now the honest bit. Don’t get me wrong, the tools are improving fast, but they still trip over the obvious things.
Faces still look slightly wrong. Hands do strange things. Text inside a clip comes out as gibberish more often than not. And anything that needs a real person showing genuine emotion still feels hollow. If your video lives or dies on a human connecting with the viewer, AI is not your answer yet.
It’s also poor at anything specific. Ask it for “a city street” and it’s fine. Ask it for your actual shopfront on your actual high street, and you’ll get something that looks almost right, which is somehow worse than getting it plainly wrong.
How to Use It Without Looking Cheap
Treat the output as raw material, not a finished product. The people getting good results are the ones who generate a clip, then add their own branding, captions, and music on top.
If you fancy trying it, pick one tool and learn it properly. Something like seedance 2.0 lets you turn a photo or a line of text into a short clip, which is plenty to see whether it earns a place in your workflow. Start with one real job, write a clear and specific prompt, and expect to run it a few times before it clicks.
And check everything before it goes out. A warped logo or a six-fingered hand does more harm to your brand than no video at all.
The Honest Verdict
AI video is a genuinely handy tool that’s been wildly oversold. Used for the boring, repetitive, visual jobs, it saves real time and money. Used to replace a proper shoot or a real human face, it falls apart.
Know the difference and it earns its keep. Ignore it completely, and before long you’ll be paying for footage your competitors are quietly making for free.
