What comes to your mind when you think of artificial intelligence? Maybe a distant sci-fi-esque future?
Well, the fact is that AI is very much a part of our lives already.
From the recommended content you get on YouTube or Netflix to personal assistants like Siri and Alexa, smart tech is transforming industries the world over.
For a bunch of explainer video nerds like us, AI disruption in video production and film is particularly fascinating.
In Scorsese’s Irishmen, AI was used to scan images from actors’ past movies to de-age the cast.
Related: Virtual Production – A Renaissance Has Begun
Animators’ lives are easier now, too. For example, Pixar Animation Studios uses AI to remove noise and produce high-quality renders at faster speeds.
These are just a few examples of AI disruption in the industry. Now, with features like visual recognition, deep video analysis, translation, transcription, and format adaption, there are so many more possibilities.
In this post, we’ll take a closer look at how AI is helping video production teams everywhere.
Understanding your audience
AI-powered CRMs like Salesforce Einstein and IBM Watson can analyze your audience’s behavior so you can understand them, create a targeted strategy, and perfect your messaging.
You’ll also get insights on which new social platform you should lean into because being everywhere isn’t reasonable.
All of the above means that AI can prove to be a very useful tool for strategists and can pave the way for a new way of doing business, one that’s more meaningful and personal because it’s based on insights.
AI-generated scripts
AI has come a long way with text generation. But it gets a bit complicated if your goal is to generate a script from scratch.
AI may go in a direction you don’t want, write something completely bizarre, or give you something that just isn’t in the right tone. Regardless, it’s still a whole lot of fun to experiment with.
Two popular AI script-generating systems include DeepStory AI and TalkToTransformer
Here’s a short video written, illustrated, and scored by AI.
Credits: Aisland (TikTok)
Read more: Why Explainer Videos Need a Killer Script
Styleboard and storyboard
A decade ago, people thought AI would always lack artistic vision. Today, it’s a different story.
In 2019, Disney scientists published a paper detailing a text-to-animation model that can generate storyboard animation from scripts.
If this sort of tech gets widely adopted, it’ll help creatives with ideation and could speed up the production process tenfold.
If you haven’t seen AI’s artistic potential, take a look at these:
1. Dall.E 2 2. Midjourney
We conjured these up with DALL·E 2 and Midjourney from a few descriptive prompts.
Related: Video Storyboarding 101 – A Guide for Novices
Artificial voice-overs
AI voice-overs are another interesting development.
At MotionCue, we still hire people to do narrations. But we might try AI just to see how it goes.
But how did AI find a voice?
Well, it all comes down to machine learning.
AI has learned to “speak” after processing hundreds of hours’ worth of recordings from real voiceover artists.
The results will only get better as programmers are able to tweak and perfect the machine learning algorithm. If you want to experiment with synthetic voiceovers, you could try out Lovo, Murf, or Speechify.
Digital asset management
Repetitive low-level tasks occupy a good portion of a creative’s time. Now, AI can handle a chunk of these.
Cloud artificial intelligence tools like Adobe Sensei can decipher images, illustrations, videos, and animation, which means that the algorithm can identify and tag digital content with relevant keywords and metadata.
This makes it easy to organize digital assets and fast-tracks the video production process.
Real-time character animation
Animation is a skill that takes time and dedication to master but AI is making the job easier.
Adobe’s AI-powered Character Animator lets you bring your characters to life simply by acting out movements.
Another cool AI video generator we discovered is Synesthesia.io. It can create videos with AI avatars and voiceovers.
How is it possible? It’s all thanks to artificial intelligence combined with features like real-time motion tracking.
The avatars on Synesthesia.io, for example, are all based on footage of real actors.
AI editing
Even though AI-backed scriptwriting, idea generation, storyboarding, and voiceovers are possible, their use in the production industry isn’t widespread–yet.
AI video editing, however, is mainstream.
AI in post-production takes care of tasks like object elimination, background noise removal, color calibration, picture stabilization, footage/image upscaling, speech-to-text auto-captions, and more.
So, what’s everyone using? Well, popular AI-backed video editing platforms include Adobe, Avid, Colourlab.ai, and NVIDIA. There are many more, of course. You just need to find one that works for your team.
Marketing and distribution powered by AI
So far, we’ve seen how AI can streamline production. But can it help with what comes after?
Turns out, it can.
For paid marketing, it can optimize ad spend and allocate a budget to channels based on performance.
As for distribution, AI can offer personalization and match content to customer.
Netflix’s algorithm does this, too. The thumbnails you see on the platform often depend on your viewing habits.
Suffice to say that AI can be of value in decision-making situations when there’s a lot of data to be analyzed.
We can’t wait to see how these remarkable systems continue to transform the way we work and interact with the world.
Related: How to Identify the Right KPIs for Your Video Marketing Campaign
