Is there anything AI can’t do (other than the washing)? We’ve been having fun exploring AI’s role in creating sticky social media videos, and we’ve put together this piece to help you do the same.
Making your own videos used to be crazy expensive, pull-your-hair-out tricky, or both. The rise of the smartphone went a long way towards making it easier to create low cost high quality social media videos, but you can do so much more with AI. It’s particularly handy when it comes to editing your raw footage, so let’s start there.
Why you want AI captions for your videos
Did you know most people watch social media videos on mute? (We’re not saying they’re watching videos when they should be doing something else, but we’re not NOT saying that either.) In fact, many social media platforms will default to playing videos on mute, and the user will have to actively switch on the sound to hear it.
And that’s all before we consider the fact that using captions on your videos is a necessary digital accessibility measure. You don’t know who will want to watch, and it could well be someone with a hearing impairment.
AI-powered captioning tools use speech recognition technology to transcribe audio quickly and accurately, saving hours of manual work while making your content accessible. Try Adobe Express’s free caption generator that automatically transcribes and adds subtitles to up to five minutes of video.
Exploring text-to-video tools
What if you have the opposite challenge: plenty of text in the form of blog posts etc, but no video footage? Luckily, there’s an AI for that too!
Tools like Lumen5.com can take your written content and repurpose it into a video. You can upload a script if you have one, but if not, you can give it the URL of your blog post or just a list of bullet points. Give it some information about your brand (colours, any rules) and watch it create a video that would have taken you several days to produce manually, and of course the whole thing is fully editable so you can make any further tweaks or changes needed.
Further AI video creation hacks
There’s so much more AI can do to help you create social media videos for your business. Here are just a couple of outputs to consider:
AI voiceovers
If you’re not keen to get in front of the camera, or you don’t have access to professional voice talent (and what small business does?), you can use an AI voice-over generator. These tools can convert written scripts into natural-sounding speech in multiple languages and accents, perfect for explainer videos, product demonstrations, or educational content. One of our favourite AI voice tools is ElevenLabs which even (unlike many others) has some realistic Scottish accents available to use.
AI avatars
Perhaps one of the most innovative developments lately is AI avatar technology. Platforms like HeyGen allow you to create your own virtual presenter who can deliver your message in dozens of languages. You can choose a pre-made avatar from their library, or create your own from a photo. You can even generate your avatar from custom prompts. Once you’ve got your ‘beta’ avatar, you can refine it with a choice of expressions, gestures, clothing, backgrounds, and movements.
AI video editing
Another favourite tool among the team here is Descript, which provides AI-assisted editing of your existing videos. This powerful (yet simple to use tool) allows you to edit the video, simply by editing the transcript, adding or deleting words and having the video updated accordingly.
There are also some nice one-click AI features such as “remove filler words” (which edits out all the “ums” and “ehs”), and “eye contact” which ensures your eyes are always looking at the camera.
Like most tech tools, you can access the majority of AI video tools for free, and then subscribe to the ones you want to use in more depth, so start by having a play with some of them, and then deciding which might actually benefit your business longer term.
And, if you’d like more help figuring out how to use AI for your business, get booked onto one of our digital skills masterclasses, or talk to our team (the real team, not their AI twins!).