How to create AI-generated videos

We’ve seen some incredible leaps in AI performance in mere months. From struggling to generate an image to now rendering video that’s indistinguishable from the real thing using nothing more than text prompts is a remarkable feat. 

That said, the cost of generating these videos from text prompts alone, at the quality that has caught our attention, is incredibly high. Data centres full of power-hungry GPUs have to process trillions upon trillions of data points to generate a 5-second video.

We bring this up simply to illustrate the point that while these AI-generated feats are amazing, there’s a remarkably high cost for generating such content, putting these tools out of reach of most of us. 

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If you’re willing to spend a little bit, though, you can take advantage of these tools as the free options are usually a few generations behind.

Sora

Arguably the best video generation tool you can try right now, Sora is an AI video generator from the same company — OpenAI — that makes ChatGPT. Most of the truly mind-blowing AI-generated videos you’re seeing online has been generated by Sora, which is why it’s worth getting to know this tool better if video generation is something you’re interested in. 

Google’s Veo 2 is another great option with allegedly better physics modelling, but Veo 2 isn’t available yet, making Sora the de facto leader in the AI video generation space. 

To access Sora you simply head here and log in. You will need a ChatGPT Plus account to use it ($20 or Rs 1,700 a month), and you’ll be given a limited number of credits for generating video every month. 

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In total, you get 1000 credits, which translates to about 50 videos. These videos are generated at 720p and are no longer than 5s each. They will also be watermarked. 

You could also pay $200 a month (Rs 17,000/month) for access to ChatGPT Pro, which gives you 10000 credits (500 videos) and the option to generate 1080p videos up to 20s in length, and to download them without watermarks. 

Do note that paying for ChatGPT Plus or Pro also gets you access to advanced GPT models as well as the Dall-E image generator, making this a good deal in some scenarios. 

Imagine.art

This is a great free tool for generating AI video. You get a limited number of tokens per day for generating videos, and these tokens replenish every 12 hours. The process of generation is simple enough. You enter a text prompt and add various criteria, hit generate, and wait several minutes for Imagine.art to do its thing. 

Generated videos are of much lower quality than Sora (but they’re free), and are limited to 5 seconds in length. On the free plan, you’ll only be allowed to generate about one video every 12 hours, so be very sure about your prompts. 

Paid plans range from Rs 883 per month to Rs 7039 per month. The cheapest plan allows you to generate 3,600 videos per year while the more expensive plans let you generate up to 96000 videos per year in custom styles and with more advanced models. 

Canva

Canva is a popular image editor and art creation tool that has also thrown its hat into the proverbial AI video generator ring. 

The quality of the videos on the free plan is, as expected, not great, and you’re restricted to five credits (five videos) for free. Videos are also very small and restricted to a few seconds. 

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Payment plans range from Rs 69 per day to Rs 4,000 a year, so they’re quite affordable compared to the competition. However, given the poor quality of the output, Canva’s use as an AI video generator is quite limited. Paying will let you generate up to 550 videos per month. 

InVideo AI

Another great tool we can recommend is InVideo.ai. It’s a comprehensive AI tool that can not only generate video, but also voice overs and images, both of which can prove very useful to content creators. As usual, you enter a prompt, choose a style, a platform, and duration, and hit generate. 

There are a few differences to note, however. Unlike other tools, the free version of InVideo doesn’t generate video from scratch and instead uses licensed stock footage. Where it excels is in putting together a script and voiceover based on your prompt, and then pairing that script and voiceover with an appropriately edited video made from stock clips. 

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The free version will only let you generate 10 minutes of content per week while allowing you to download 4 watermarked videos. Payment plans range from $28 per month (Rs 2,390) to $96 per month (Rs 8,197), and will give you access to more voice clones, AI generation credits, watermark-free downloads, and more. 

AI video generation is still a very expensive process and difficult to make available for free. If you’re willing to pay for the service, however, there are a handful of great options that can help you generate video, but be warned, even these will often require a great deal of tweaking to get right.

For now, we think these AI video generation tools are a fun and expensive experiment. Given the pace at which these tools are evolving, though, it won’t be long before they become an irreplaceable part of creative workflows.