What AI video is good at
Launch energy, product beauty, and concepts that would cost a fortune to shoot. A sneaker flying through light trails. A product film with impossible camera moves. UGC-style ad creatives at the pace paid social demands. When the idea is visual and the timeline is tight, AI video is hard to beat.
Where it falls short
Proof. If your ad's power comes from a real person, a real place or a real result, AI can't supply that — and pretending otherwise will cost you more than the ad ever earned. The same goes for anything that needs a verifiable claim on screen. Use AI for the story; use reality for the evidence.
Disclosure, plainly
Platforms increasingly require AI-generated content to be labelled, and audiences are getting good at spotting it anyway. The honest approach is also the effective one: AI is part of the toolkit, not a secret. Say so, and let the work speak for itself.
How to brief it well
Bring three things: references you love, the goal of the film, and a list of must-nots. The brief that says “make it cinematic” produces mush. The brief that says “this product, this feeling, this reference, this length” produces a film. And judge a studio on its direction — its taste, pacing and finishing — not on which tool it names.
What good AI video looks like
The difference between good and cheap AI video is visible in seconds, and it has nothing to do with resolution. Good work holds the product steady — the same shoe, the same bottle, the same colour, from first frame to last. The camera moves for a reason instead of drifting. Sound is designed, not pasted. And the cut respects the viewer's time: every second earns the next one.
The tells of bad work are just as consistent: faces that morph mid-shot, hands that melt, products that change shape between cuts, and motion that wanders without purpose. A studio that shows you its failures honestly — and explains what it fixed — is worth more than one that only shows its best frame.
Ask for the full deliverable set before you buy: the hero film, the cutdowns for each platform, and the stills. A single sixteen-second clip with nowhere to go is a demo, not an ad campaign.
What actually drives the cost
Three things drive the price of an AI video project: length, revisions, and variations. A thirty-second hero film costs more than a fifteen-second cutdown, but the cutdowns are where the value multiplies — one idea, five placements, each sized and timed for its platform.
Revisions are the hidden cost. Agree the reference frames before full production, and agree how many revision rounds are included. A project with locked references and two structured rounds finishes on time. A project that rethinks the idea at the final cut never does — whatever the tool.
Related service: AI Content & Video.