The world of ai generated videos has grown leaps and bounds in the last few months, and as such there are quite a number of options interms of software and techniques.

We have all witnessed the rise of AI image generation and I would suggest we still yet to see its plateau in-spite of its ability to create incredibly convincing imagery. And we have all seen viral images of Donald J Trump being arrested in the streets of New York that broke the internet for a short moment, I believe that, a similar viral moment will come for AI video generation within the year. But I digress, In this article I would to give you an overview of the different tools available and to attempt creating a 30 second short video using some of these tool.

The tools available can be divided into two main categories, the first being subscription based online platforms(Closed source), and open source local platforms.

Open Source

An AI video generator that is open source is a tool that employs artificial intelligence to produce videos based on the text descriptions provided by the user. It utilizes Natural Language Processing (NLP) to comprehend the context of the text and then employs technologies such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Diffusion, Transformer, or others to generate new synthetic video that correspond to the text description.

The fact that it is open source implies that the code, models, and training frameworks are publicly accessible under licenses that permit individuals to freely utilize, modify, enhance, and distribute them. This fosters collaboration and innovation. However, it is essential to exercise thoughtful governance over these powerful technologies as they continue to rapidly evolve.

There are a number of ways in which one can access and utilize these open source models, among these methods is Hugging face (a machine learning (ML) and data science platform and community that helps users build, deploy and train machine learning models. It provides the infrastructure to demo, run and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) in live applications.) However if you have the hardware to run these models, there are free UI tools such as Automatic 1111 or ComfyUI , these tools provide a visually intuitive interface where models and checkpoints can be used withing the generation process.

Closed Source

DeepMind’s WaveNet is a prime example of closed source AI video generation. This closed-source deep learning model is designed to produce incredibly lifelike human voices. WaveNet’s closed architecture means that it is not accessible to the general public, making it a proprietary technology that powers a range of applications, such as voiceovers for videos and virtual assistants.

Another case of closed-source video synthesis technology can be found in companies like RunwayML. RunwayML offers a platform that allows artists and creators to generate videos using pre-trained machine learning models. While the platform itself is user-friendly, the underlying AI models and algorithms are not open for public scrutiny.

Closed source AI video generation is commonly employed by businesses and organizations to maintain a competitive advantage and safeguard their intellectual property. However, it also raises concerns regarding transparency, accountability, and ethical use of AI. The lack of openness makes it difficult for external parties to assess any biases or potential ethical issues within the algorithms.

Free and Paid AI Video Generation Tools

1. Runway Gen-2

Best for: creating short art videos and animations from scratch.

Runway, a startup company, made waves in 2022 with the co-development of Stable Diffusion, a groundbreaking text-to-image model. But they didn’t stop there. They recently introduced Runway Gen-2, a revolutionary technology that takes video creation to a whole new level.

With its state-of-the-art structure and content-guided video diffusion model, Runway Gen-2 has the ability to analyze and comprehend natural language with remarkable accuracy. This means that not only does it produce videos that actually make sense, but it can also bring your wildest imaginations to life with just a simple text prompt.

But that’s not all. Runway Gen-2 goes beyond text-to-video capabilities. It can create videos from images, videos, texts, and even a combination of all three. It can transform static mockups into dynamic animated renders, add stunning effects to specific subjects, turn untextured objects into realistic ones, and even customize models to suit your needs.

In a nutshell, Runway Gen-2 is a game-changer in the world of video creation. It empowers users to unleash their creativity and bring their ideas to life in ways they never thought possible. So, whether you’re a filmmaker, a designer, or simply someone with a vivid imagination, Runway Gen-2 is here to help you turn your visions into captivating videos.

Price: Free with limited features; $15/month for a standard plan; $28/month for a pro plan; contact Runway and book a demo for the enterprise plan.

Pros:

• Considerable improvements in image fidelity compared with Runway Gen-1.
• Multiple AI models to create videos from various sources.
• Online solutions without software installation.
• Create realistic videos, animations, and many more in simple words.

Cons:

• It only makes short video clips.
• The final videos look blurry.
• It does not create audio for the video.

2. Morph Studio

Best for: creating short videos from texts for free.

Morph Studio is an AI-powered video generator that allows you to create stunning videos in just a few clicks. With Morph Studio, you can easily transform your ideas into engaging video content without any technical skills or prior experience. Whether you need a video for your business, social media, or personal use. Now you can try its beta version on Discord.

Price: Free.

Pros:

• Create videos quickly and without the need for expensive equipment or software.
• Support various styles so long as you define them in the prompt.

Cons:

• Not suitable for more complex projects and long videos.
• Every piece of AI video creation is public on Discord.

3. Pika Labs

Best for: generating videos from texts and images.

Pika Labs is an AI video generator that aims to revolutionize the way videos are created. By harnessing the power of advanced machine learning algorithms, Pika Labs offers a range of features that simplify the video production process. It not only creates videos from texts but also from images and texts. Now, its beta version is available on Discord.

Price: Free.

Pros:

• Free and simple to use.
• Fast generating process.

Cons:

• Can’t create videos longer than 3 seconds.
• Your creation is public on its Discord community.
• Videos are watermarked.

4. Picsart Text2Video-Zero

Best for: synthesizing any footage online with zero shot.

Picsart’s AI research team (PAIR) has come up with a fresh approach to creating video content solely from texts, building upon existing text-to-image synthesis methods like Stable Diffusion. In the past, AI-generated subjects and backgrounds would slightly vary from frame to frame, but with Picsart’s new techniques, everything appears consistent and lifelike. What’s more, you can now transform your videos into a Monet Impression, Sunrise style using the new generative AI by simply prompting it. Unlike other research projects that take ages to reach the public, the PAIR text-to-video generative AI system will soon be available to customers. Picsart has officially announced its plans to release software products based on this AI framework in the upcoming weeks. Excitingly, you can already try out the open-source demo of Picsart Text2Video-Zero on Hugging Face and Github.

Price: Free.

Pros:

• Better consistency between frames.
• An accurate understanding of natural words.
• Free and open source.

Cons:

• Frequently run into errors.
• Extremely slow rendering.

5. Stable-diffusion-videos

Best for: synthesizing AI videos from scratch online for free.

Stable-diffusion-videos is an online tool built on the Stable Diffusion model. From its demos, you can see that Stable-diffusion-video can synthesize videos about animations and food with zero shots. But note that, it only shows still footage and cannot convert texts to frames in motion. So far, it’s not a good assistant to generate videos for your video creations, but a good place to test and make AI videos for fun.

Price: Free.

Pros:

• Free to use.
• More custom settings for fps, denoising, interpolation, etc.
• Allow downloading the sharing of generated AI videos directly.

Cons:

• Slow rendering and render error.
• Can’t generate complicated and long videos.
• Generate incohesive footage.

6. DeepBrain AI

Best for: synthesizing AI avatar videos for social media, education, enterprise, etc.

DeepBrain is a tech company devoted to providing practical AI human solutions and has gained CES Innovation Awards Winner in 2022. In the sphere of AI video production, it launches text-to-speech and text-to-video features with realistic AI persons from various nationalities. By simply inputting texts or asking it to create a video script, you can get a well-organized presentation video, which is applicable to social media posts, e-learning, and video marketing.

Price: Free with limited features; $29 for a starter plan; contact DeepBrain to book a special plan for long-term professional use.

Pros:

• Support 100+ AI avatars and 80+ languages.
• Generate video scripts via ChatGPT.
• PRich editing features for videos, images, music, background, and texts.

Cons:

• Cannot preview AI-generated videos until exporting.
• Extremely slow AI video rendering.

7. Synthesia AI

Best for: making informative videos from texts with AI faces.

Synthesia is an amazing online AI video generator that stands out from other tools still in development. It has already harnessed the power of creative AI to create visual avatars, AI voices, presentations, and video templates for a wide range of purposes such as training, tech support, and marketing.

With Synthesia, you have the ability to create videos featuring diverse AI avatars that have natural facial expressions and voices. You can also customize their gestures, hairstyles, and clothing to make them truly unique. In addition to synthesizing videos from text, you can include screen recordings and personalize the video background with texts and graphics.

If you’re in need of a practical AI video generator for making how-to videos or product marketing videos, Synthesia is an excellent choice. It significantly reduces the time and effort required for video production, making it a valuable tool for any project.

Price: $30/month for personal use; contact Synthesia to book a demo for the enterprise plan.

Pros:

• 85+ preset AI avatars; custom AI avatars.
• AI text-to-speech conversions in 120+ languages and accents.
• Hundreds of customizable templates for AI video creation.
• Allow editing font, colors, graphics, icons, and soundtracks in generated AI videos.

Cons:

• Can’t generate realistic footage according to semantics.
• Limited AI video creations per month.

8. Designs.ai

Best for: making high-quality videos from texts online.

Designs.ai is an online design platform capable of making posts, logos, graphics, and videos. Driven by the latest AI tech, Designs now can create videos from scripts with natural voiceover. And compared with other text-to-video tools, Designs offers you more aesthetic stock videos, images, and background music. Videos from Designs look like they were made by professional editors but were actually made with a few clicks.

Price: $29/month for a basic plan; $69/month for a pro plan; contact to book an enterprise plan.

Pros:

• AI voiceover sounds natural and friendly.
• Support 19+ languages.
• A full set of templates.
• HD and 4K output.

Cons:

• Can’t convert a script over 1500 words to a video.
• No AI avatars were generated.

9. Raw Shorts

Best for: making AI animated videos from texts.

As a popular online video maker now powered by AI, Raw Shorts includes an AI video script generator, AI video maker, and online video editor in one stop. You can paste your own posts or ask it to generate a script for you in terms of a specific topic and style. Then it will guide you to choose a template, edit graphics, and texts, and preview the final video online. You can also find some realistic videos in Raw Short, but they are not AI-generated. Raw Shorts accesses 1+ million commercially licensed videos and animations to match the words you type in.

Price: Limited free trial; $20/month for an essential plan; $30/month for a business plan.

Pros:

• Generate video scripts for various needs.
• Create videos from text quickly and easily.
• Offer a large number of royalty-free videos, images, animations, and icons.

Cons:

• Not accurate enough to match videos and words.
• Watermarked and low-res videos were generated in the free trial.
• Incapable of making personal and unique videos.

10. Lumen5

Best for: turning blog posts and other written content into presentation videos online.

Lumen5 is an online video editor with cutting, merging, resizing, and some basic editing features. Now it combines advanced AI tech and a drag-n-drop interface to make video creation simpler than ever.

Powered by AI and machine learning, Lumen5 can summarize the content and match each scene with relevant stock videos. Besides, it calculates and delivers the best visual output of text positioning and scene compositions. To make the presentation video more engaging, Lumen5 also adds transitions, motion graphics, and sound effects to the video. Even though it cannot generate AI avatars, it helps spice up your talking head video with callouts, cutaways, and auto captions.

Price: Limited trial version; $19/month for a starter plan; $59 per month for a premium plan; $149/month for a business plan.

Pros:

• Millions of stock videos and photos.
• Make videos in many languages.
• Easy to create videos via blog URLs.

Cons:

• Text positioning and scene compositions are fixed.
• Can’t customize images and audio tracks.
• Fail to generate footage that matches the words sometimes.

11. Elai

Best for: converting texts to videos with AI avatars.

Elai is an online tool to generate videos from texts via templates and AI talking heads. But at the core of Elai is an automatic text-to-speech and slide generator. Currently, Elai has over 25 avatars speaking in 65+ languages.

Once you choose an avatar (both realistic and cartoon AI avatars are supported), you can type in the words manually, paste the URL of an article, or use GPT-3 in it to create the script in seconds. And then you can get a presentation video with an AI person talking about the thing you input.

Price: Free with limited features; $29/month for a basic plan; $99/month for an advanced plan; contact Elai to book a corporate plan.

Pros:

• Free to make an AI video from texts for one minute.
• Generate video scripts via GPT-3.
• Allow editing texts, animations, music, and elements in generated videos.
• HD 1080p and 4K output.

Cons:

• Fewer avatar options and languages than other online text-to-video tools.
• Digital avatars look unnatural and emotionless.
• Cannot preview editing results in real-time.

12. Pictory

Best for: generating videos from texts online.

Pictory is a cloud-based AI video maker. In essence, it combines reverent stock footage into an entire video. After summarizing the texts you input, it searches for the best footage to match your words among over 3 million high-quality royalty-free video clips, images, and music. Meanwhile, it converts texts to speeches in various languages and accents.

Moreover, AI-driven editing features in Pictory can polish uploaded videos according to the texts you modified, remove filler words and silences, add subtitles, creating short videos from your long-form content, thus saving you hours of tedious editing work based on the timeline.

Price: Free trial with limited projects and video length; $19/month for a standard plan; $39/month for a premium plan; contact Pictory to book an enterprise plan.

Pros:

• Render faster than many online AI video generators.
• A large collection of stock footage.
• Real-time edits preview.

Cons:

• Unable to generate AI avatars.
• Watermark on the file video.

Conclusion

AI video generators can be categorized into two main types. The first type involves creating videos from scratch using prompts, while the second type focuses on arranging videos using pre-existing stock footage and graphics, such as presentation videos. Both types of generators offer significant advantages by reducing the need for extensive filming and post-editing, providing more options for individuals who find traditional video editing software challenging to use.

However, the emergence of text-to-video technology also introduces new concerns regarding misinformation. There is a possibility that users may propagate unverified ideas to the audience, presenting them as truth and supporting their claims with realistic footage. To address this issue, companies like Google have chosen not to release their AI generator models or source codes to the public until they can effectively filter out biased, violent, and deepfake content.

*In part 2 we shall use a number of these tools and more to create out very own video with a consistent story.*