“Luma AI’s Dream Machine Shocks the World.”
“Google’s new ‘Veo’ AI text-to-video tech is incredible!”
“OpenAI’s Sora Just Blew Our Freaking Mind.”
These are some of the breathless online reactions to Luma, Veo, and Sora, three AI text-to-video tools that launched this year.
In case you missed it, these tools can generate hyper-realistic videos based on simple text prompts. And they’ve been causing quite a stir.
For example, after seeing what Sora could do, filmmaker and studio owner Tyler Perry paused an $800M studio expansion. His reasoning — Sora could potentially replace the need for expensive location-based shoots and set designs.
As a B2B agency, our most pressing question is, “What could all this mean for our clients?” Below, we explore the benefits of using AI video tools for content creation.
AI video generation at first glance
Out of the tools we’ve seen so far, Sora and Veo have impressed us most. Both remain unavailable to the public at the time of writing, but a limited group of visual artists and filmmakers have been granted access to experiment with them.
So, what do we know so far?
Both the Sora and Veo websites feature a series of videos that are, quite frankly, very impressive.
For instance, on the Sora website, we see a swooping cinematic shot follows a couple through a snow-filled Tokyo, a vintage SUV tearing along a dusty mountain trail, and an animated fluffy creature (that looks straight out of a Pixar movie) paws at a flickering candle.
The content is not perfectly visualized — something that OpenAI itself points out on the Sora website. In one video, a litter of grey wolves spontaneously multiplies. In another, a plastic chair being dug out the desert begins to float and change shape.
We can only assume future updates will be less prone to these chaotic visual renderings, but it’s worth bearing in mind when these tools become available to the mainstream.
Can AI video generation tools benefit B2B brands?
In short, definitely. From our research, we’ve identified two ways they could potentially revolutionize your content creation.
Speed up early ideation.
Let’s say you’re working with an agency on a new brand video. You’ve got some initial thoughts you want to share on the general look and feel of the video. Creating a mockup with one of these AI video generation tools is the perfect place to start, ensuring you and your agency partner are on the same page.
With a simple prompt, you could create a polished video that conveys the specific tone or style you’re hoping to achieve, whether a general visual treatment or specific types of imagery. And it’d literally take you minutes to create.
If you don’t like what you see, you could simply generate something different. Again, in minutes.
The ability to rapidly iterate like this could be enormously helpful when you’re collaborating with a partner agency, allowing you to settle on an initial concept much faster.
Pitch an idea to stakeholders.
Imagine pitching your concept to a room full of stakeholders. It’s early days in the project, but you want to generate some buzz, get them invested in your approach, and gather some input.
Now imagine playing a cinematic-style video clip that shows your vision in detail. Despite Sora’s maximum video length of one minute (Google says that Veo can generate videos that go beyond a minute, without specifying an exact duration), that’s still enough time to tease an overarching visual treatment or demonstrate how a particular scene might play in a finished product.
Essentially, AI video tools could be used to help your audience instantly grasp an idea in a way that traditional mock-ups and storyboarding cannot. With a concrete sense of your idea early on, there’s a higher chance that the rest of the project will flow smoothy, with everyone clear on direction.
Now, for the caveats…
The issue of copyright infringement isn’t going away. While OpenAI and Google have been coy on the topic, they hint that their respective tools are partly trained using video content available on the public web.
Which begs the question, if you create a video influenced by the work of a digital artist, who should get credit? Can that work ever be counted as original? And would that artist have grounds for legal action?
Given that Sora and Veo produce content from a training set of publicly available images, it’s also entirely conceivable that another company (even your biggest competitor) might create a video that’s extremely similar to your own.
When both tools are finally released, these dilemmas should be top of mind for every marketer looking to use them for ongoing content creation process.
Sora and Veo haven’t quite blown our freaking mind. But there’s still time.
From what we’ve seen of tools like Sora and Veo, it’s hard not to be impressed.
Though clearly nowhere near ready for full-blown content creation, they can still benefit digital marketers in the early ideation phase of a video campaign.
There’s still no official launch date for Sora or Veo, but we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled and sharing any updates when we have them.
Contact us today to learn how to create video assets that persuade prospects at every step of your sales funnel.
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