A lot has changed over the past year while I’ve been waiting for “the best AI video generators for creators and marketers” to emerge.
The list of leading contenders got scrambled six months ago when OpenAI announced Sora, “an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions,” on Feb. 15.
Ten days later, I tried to check out Sora for myself. But OpenAI’s website told me, “At this time, we don’t have a timeline or additional details to share on Sora’s broader public availability.”
I’ve been waiting for more updates. And waiting. But waiting for Sora is starting to resemble “Waiting for Godot.” (If you haven’t seen Samuel Beckett’s play, then spoiler alert: Godot sends word that he’ll be arriving tomorrow, but he never appears.)
The long wait: Sora’s elusive public availabilityI watched “OpenAI Sora’s first short film – ‘Air Head,’ created by shy kids,” when it debuted on March 26. And I assumed that Sora would become publicly available in a few months.
But it’s already August and only a limited number of visual artists, designers and filmmakers have been granted access to “gain feedback on how to advance the model to be the most helpful for creative professionals.”
In other words, I still can’t evaluate Sora for myself.
In addition, shy kids is a Toronto-based production company. It’s unclear if KaraVideo.AI, a video generator powered by Sora, deserves most of the credit for this eye-catching video. If you don’t have a creative team of humans driving the text-to-video model, then would you see similar or different results?
Exploring 7 alternative AI video generatorsWhile waiting for Sora, I taught two online classes on influencer marketing and AI at the New Media Academy in Dubai, UAE. I showed my students “Air Head” but emphasized that AI video generators still need human creativity to produce interesting results.
To help them apply what they learned, I assigned them the task of creating a video using a free AI generator available in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region within two or three days.
To find the best tools, I turned to AI search engines (Perplexity, ChatGPT-4, Claude 3, Microsoft CoPilot and Google’s Gemini). Each provided a list of recommendations, with options ranging from six to eight suggestions.
Overall, my students learned about seven free AI video generators – six that I selected and one that another instructor in the program recommended. Here’s the list in alphabetical order:
1. Canva’s Magic Studio: Quick and customizable video creationCanva’s AI video generator is part of its Magic Studio, a suite of AI-powered tools designed to help teams quickly create video from text, and then refine the content using editing tools, applying filters or removing backgrounds with a single click.
2. InVideo AI: Simple and efficient video productionInVideo AI provides pre-made templates and an AI-driven text-to-video feature. It allows you to create professional-looking videos quickly. The free plan includes watermarked videos and limited export options.
3. Kapwing: Collaborative editing with AI toolsKapwing is a collaborative video editor that offers AI tools for video creation, such as automatic subtitling and meme generators. The free plan has some limitations, like watermarked exports and limited cloud storage.
4. Lumen5: Turning text into engaging videosLumen5 converts text into engaging video content. You can input your blog post, article or any text content, and it will generate a video based on it. The free plan includes basic features, though it adds a watermark.
5. Pictory: Condensing long-form content into short videosPictory allows you to transform long-form content, such as blogs and articles, into short, shareable videos.
It uses AI to highlight key points and create a video summary. The free version comes with some limitations but is functional for basic needs.
6. Runway ML: Experimenting with creative AIRunway ML is a unique tool that offers a free plan with credits for using their AI features, including video generation. It’s a good choice if you want to experiment with a creative and powerful tool, but keep in mind the free tier has limitations.
7. Synthesia: AI-driven multilingual video contentSynthesia is an AI video generator that transforms text into speech in a few minutes. It includes more than 160 AI avatars that can speak your text in over 130 languages. This enables marketers to create training, how-to, and product marketing videos for global audiences.
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Business email address Sign me up! Processing... Insights from hands-on use of AI video generatorsFollowing my overview of these seven AI video generators, I asked my students to pick just one to use for their capstone assignment. I also disclosed that I was writing this article and allowed my students to contribute their thoughts on the option that they had used.
Dana Al Khulaifi, a student at United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) and a Data and Technical Support Manager at Dawahi AlAin, a community project, said:
Three other students, who wanted to remain anonymous, shared their comments about other AI video generators that they had used:
Here is a list of comments about using AI videos from more than a dozen other students:
Overall, here are the general observations made by dozens of students in the two classes:
AdvantagesWhile waiting for Sora, evaluating other AI video generators can still teach us some important lessons.
The most important lesson is this: “AI won’t take your job, it’s somebody using AI that will take your job.”
The economist, Richard Baldwin, was the first person to say this at the 2023 World Economic Forum’s Growth Summit, and variations of this phrase have been repeated as people discuss the potential impacts of AI.
Don’t wait for the perfect AI video generator to finally appear.
Evaluate some of the best ones that are already available to learn what they can – and can’t – do already. Taking this test-and-learn approach will enable you to evaluate Sora when it appears.
And if Sora doesn’t arrive in the foreseeable future, then you will have learned another important lesson: “Perfect is the enemy of the good.”
Either way, you are less likely to lose your job because you don’t know when or how to use AI to “generate videos up to a minute long while maintaining visual quality and adherence to the user’s prompt,” which is what Sora keeps promising to do.