With the groundbreaking AI technology this year, we've seen generative AI evolving fast from chatbots like ChatGPT to image creation by Midjourney. AI video editing and AI-powered video remastering and upscaling have already been implemented into practice by Adobe and DaVinci Resolve, which promises to redefine the way we create and edit videos.
Now, text-to-video AI technologies seem to be the big thing in the spotlight. In this article, we delve into 14 innovative AI video generators and how they transform video creation. (The list is constantly updating.) Some of them are set to release, and some are already available to use for everyone. At the end of the post, we also provide you some tips for enhancing AI-generated videos quality. Just read on.
1. Sora
Best for: converting texts to high fidelity videos, animating still images, and expanding existing videos.
Sora is the latest and most promising text-to-video AI model from OpenAI. From the official teaser, we can see that it outperforms almost all the existing AI models. It can create detailed scenes with multiple characters, specific movements, and accurate details of the subject and background like they were in the physical world. The model understands language deeply, allowing it to interpret prompts accurately and create compelling characters with vibrant emotions. Sora can also generate multiple shots in a single video while accurately maintaining characters and visual style.
Currently, Sora is opening up to red teamers to evaluate key areas for potential harm or risk and some visual artists, designers, and filmmakers to gather professional feedbacks for further improvements. Learn how to use Sora with early access here.
Price: Unknown
Pros:
- Better understanding and simulating physics in the real world than other models.
- Videos generated by Sora can be up to 1 minute long.
- It has a specific team working on misinformation, hateful content, bias, and the IP of others.
Cons:
- It cannot always accurately simulate complex physics in a scene or understand specific cause-and-effect instances.
- It's currently not available to common users.
2. Google Lumiere
Best for: creating videos from texts and still images and editing specific portions of the videos.
The development of text-to-video AI is rapidly advancing, and Google Lumiere is once again joining the game. This new model claims to create consistent and realistic movement across the whole clip. Unlike existing models that synthesize distant keyframes followed by temporal super-resolution, it uses spatial and temporal down- and up-sampling, and leverages a pre-trained text-to-image diffusion model to directly generate full videos. In addition, it can edit any specific part of a video or a still image with a simple mask and prompt, and make videos in the target style.
Price: Unknown
Pros:
- Considerable improvements in image consistency.
- Multiple ways to create videos, including text to video, image to video, text & image to video.
- Provide inpainting capabilities like altering clothing style or animal type in a frame.
- Able to animate a part of a still image.
Cons:
- Low-resolution output (1024×1024px only).
- The frame rate is limited to 16fps.
- It cannot generate videos longer than 5 seconds.
3. Runway Gen-2
Best for: creating short art videos and animations from scratch.
Runway is a startup company that co-developed Stable Diffusion, a breakout text-to-image model in 2022. In Gen-1, you need to upload an existing video, then it modifies the video into a new style. This year, Runway unveiled Gen-2 which creates videos with nothing but words.
Built with a cutting-edge structure and content-guided video diffusion model, Runway Gen-2 analyzes and understands natural words accurately. Not only delivers footage that really makes sense, but it also synthesizes videos in any style as long as you can put your imagination into a text prompt. In addition to text-to-video features, Runway Gen-2 creates videos from images, videos, texts, and images mixed, turns mockups into animated renders, applies effects to certain subjects, renders untextured things into realistic, and customizes models.
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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Picsart Text2Video-Zero
Best for: synthesizing any footage online with zero shot.
Based on the existing text-to-image synthesis methods (e.g., Stable Diffusion), Picsart's AI research team (PAIR) has introduced a new approach to generating new video content from only texts. In the near past, AI-generated subjects and the background looked slightly different from frame to frame. But in Picsart's new methods, things look consistent and realistic. Moreover, you can use the new generative AI to turn the video to a new appearance by a prompt "make it Monet Impression, Sunrise style".
Unlike most research projects that take a long time to be deployed publicly, it won't be long until the PAIR text-to-video generative AI system becomes customer-facing. Picsart officially announces that it plans to release new software products that are built on this generative AI framework in the coming weeks. Now you get 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
- Rich editing features for videos, images, music, background, and texts.
Cons:
- Cannot preview AI-generated videos until exporting.
- Extremely slow AI video rendering.
9. Synthesia AI
Best for: making informative videos from texts with AI faces.
Synthesia is a leading online AI video generator. Unlike tools in incubation, Synthesis has already unleashed the power of creative AI to generate visual avatars, AI voices, presentations, and video templates for training, tech support, marketing, and various purposes.
In Synthesia, you can make videos with diverse AI avatars with natural facial expressions and voices. Meanwhile, it allows you to tailor its gesture, hairstyle, and clothing. Aside from synthesizing videos from texts, you can insert screen recordings, and customize texts and graphics in the video background. If you are looking for a practical AI video generator to make how-to videos or product marketing videos, Synthesia is a good option that largely cuts down time investment in video production.
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.
10. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
How to Enhance AI-generated Videos
Still, videos generated by AI tools, either reality videos or animations, do not look sharp and smooth enough. Because only a few AI apps are capable of generating videos in 4K and most of them are creating videos in SD at 24fps or 30fps.
When the footage is of a high resolution or contains a lot of movement, the AI video generator may struggle to keep up with a high frame rate and resolution. Besides, the capabilities of the AI video generator itself may also impact the maximum supported frame rate. Hopefully, VideoProc Converter AI, a powerful video processing program, helps overcome the limitations of AI video generators in in terms of frame rate and resolution.
VideoProc Converter AI features AI Super Resolution to enlarge SD videos and images to up to 4K and AI Frame Interpolation to boost FPS to 60fps/100fps/120fps and more. Besides, you can use its quick-edit tools to cut, crop, rotate/flip, and merge AI videos.
Download VideoProc Converter AI and make the AI-generated videos sharper and smoother now!
Note: The Windows version now supports AI-powered Super Resolution, Frame Interpolation, and Stabilization to enhance video and image quality. These AI features for Mac will be coming soon.
Step 1. Open VideoProc Converter AI. Open the Super Resolution panel.
Step 2. Import videos from any AI video generator by dragging and dropping.
Step 3. Go to the Model Settings. Choose the scale 2x, 3x, 4x, or just enhance video quality without changing the resolution.
Step 4. Choose the output format and click Run to export the upscaled video.
Tips. Exit from the Super Resolution panel. You can go on boosting the video FPS with AI Frame Interpolation, merging multiple clips into one file, cropping, rotating, etc.
Final Thoughts
AI video generators are mainly divided into two types – one for synthesizing videos from scratch with prompts, and the other for arranging videos with stock footage and graphics like presentation videos. Both of them can largely reduce the investment in filming and post-editing and bring more options to people who think conventional video editing software is a challenge to navigate.
On the other hand, with the arrival of an easier way to make realistic videos, text-to-video also brings new threats of misinformation. Chances are that a user instills a non-verified idea to the audience, pushes it as the truth, and supports its claim with lifelike footage. And that's why many companies like Google have decided not to open their AI generator models or source codes to the public until biased, violent, and deepfake content can be filtered out.
Still, the results are fascinating and even going to be better with the power of AI. Challenges are not only about machine learning, deep learning, and algorithms stuff, but also something moral under an effective system.