So many people seem to love to hate on AI.

There’s good reason, of course. New technology brings unchartered territory rife with potential ethical problems, plagiarism, and copyright concerns, as well as worries about replacing human jobs.

Then there’s the core issue of quality. Between generative AI sometimes just making stuff up and generally being an awkward robot, video content made only with artificial intelligence just isn’t the same. 

However, some of the gripes about AI seem to come from people using technology in the wrong ways. Not just morally wrong but creatively, intellectually, and practically wrong.

We’re not here to argue for or against AI – but we’re in favor of common sense. 

To prove just how open-minded and common-sensical we are at Hackstone, we ran a little test with AI. After showing you this quick-and-dirty demo, we’ll dive into some particulars about AI video marketing, AI-generated video content, and a couple of other buzzworthy topics.

We’ll touch on questions like:

  • What are the problems of AI in marketing?
  • How is AI disrupting marketing?
  • Is AI a threat to marketing?
  • What’s that empty feeling in my soul right now?

First, let’s look at our little exercise with AI.

The Test

Way back in 2018 – not long before ChatGPT but a good while after Ask Jeeves had its moment – we made a fun video just for entertainment purposes around the holidays. We used that for this AI experiment.

These were simpler times. We were younger and more naive back then and our brand videos have matured along the way but still… this was a catchy short film. So we turned to GPTs (micro apps using ChatGPT technology) to query some common video tasks you might be curious about outsourcing to AI.

First, there was a GPT tool that promised to take a Vimeo video and provide a transcript. Errr… here’s what happened:

Sample AI-generated video script

So we tried something else. 

We gave a different AI tool a link to a YouTube video and asked for a summary of the content. 

For some reason, the AI robot chose to focus on a fairly insignificant character (no offense, Tyler) and totally misread the sardonic end to our video. 

We also told AI to give us a text blog on what it had decided at this point was a “comedic sketch” portraying a family reunion – serving as “a heartwarming reminder of the unique blend of love and laughter that defines the holiday season.” 

Hey, we never said this test was going to show you the productive ways of using AI. Stick with us here. 

So it spit out a grammatically correct blog and then some shared text for social media that we requested. 

We had a lot of material at this point so what the heck, why not turn this text content over to an AI-powered video creation tool? 

We took the ChatGPT-made “summary” and gave it to an AI video maker with, admittedly, terrible instructions. 

Things really took a turn toward dumpster fire from here.

See for yourself: 

AI-Generated Video Content

Here’s what we learned from testing these AI tools for basic video tasks:

  • The short text content it created wasn’t bad.
  • When you ask it to interpret or analyze content, you’ll get extremely literal (read: probably awful) results.
  • Emotions, sarcasm, and subtly don’t translate – like, at all.
  • Minimal prompts or haphazard inputs to an AI tool are going to produce unhinged video results. 
  • We’d steer you away from using AI to actually create – as in compile stock footage and text on screen – video content for your business.

Is there anything AI can do to help with video production? 

We think there’s a time and place for technology-assisted creation and distribution, for sure. 

When you’re working with a content vertical or site that depends on major web traffic, for instance, you absolutely need AI tools to research topics and keywords that will generate ideas en masse. Similarly, if you’re running more than one social media platform, you should be using automation to post videos on more than one channel at a time. 

With new tools and platforms emerging constantly, we embrace experimentation and innovation to see what can enhance our work by removing mundane tasks so that humans can be more creative overall. 

Here are a few ways AI video tools can work wonders on a project:

  1. Automated Scene Detection and Editing: Particularly when you’re creating multi-platform content and splicing and dicing one large file into snippets, shorts, and reels, video editing automation can save you time. 
  2. Intelligent Color Correction and Grading: Technology in this area isn’t new but we’ll let it ride on this list. Automated toning and color correction on stills and video can save hours in post-production.
  3. AI Voiceovers: For certain projects – particularly for social media – artificial intelligence voicing can be acceptable. Don’t think for a second you’re fooling the audience but as long as the content and medium are appropriate and the end user is accustomed to an AI voice on the platform, it can work. Brands should use it sparingly, please. 
  4. Tailored Ads: Don’t hold back here! AI and automation are game-changers in delivering your content to the right audience at the right time. AI analyzes user behavior and preferences to suggest content that aligns with individual interests, increasing engagement and satisfaction.
  5. Scripts and closed captions: With a human supervisor, it’s best to let AI do some of the grunt work on video transcripts, closed captioning, text-to-audio translation, and so forth.

In short, we’d recommend identifying ways AI can save you time on low-impact areas of your work and build up to more intensive uses (with some safeguards and quality control in place).

Just because AI content and other mediocre short-form videos are pervasive on the internet doesn’t mean that’s the right approach for your brand. Consumers may be accustomed to wading through terrible experiences – but you’ll stand out by producing content you’re proud of. By the same token, just because AI isn’t great for every part of video creation doesn’t mean it’s useless.

At Hackstone, we like to say we make commercials for people who hate commercials (i.e. everyone). With the rise of AI tools – some of which are awesome for productivity – we might add a footnote to our slogan: We make real commercials for humans who are sick of ads made by robots. 

Sure, no professional studio or agency is as cheap as AI but we’re deep thinkers, suckers for cinematic commercials, and down for some dark humor and some normal humor, too. We don’t have a chatbot so give us a call or send us an email and a real human will respond to your video marketing message soon!