For what seems like decades, people have been telling us that AI is the future. Well, we’re starting to think the future is here. Over the last few years, new AI tools for creators have begun to change the way we think about media. These days, you can find an AI tool for everything.
Are they as good as hiring real professionals? Not quite, but they can help creators make content quickly. We’ve chosen six AI tools across a range of media to give you a sense for where the technology is going. Every tool on this list has a trial account or free option so you can test them out for yourself today.
Don’t have time for that? Don’t worry, we asked our resident tech tester to try them out for you. You’ll find plenty of examples below.
AI Tools for Images and Video
Dall-E 2
50 free credits in your first months + 15 free credits every month after
Finally, Dall-E 2 is free and open to the general public. Whether you’re a content creator, artist, or someone that just likes playing with new tech, your time has come. DALL-E will generate images from your description, make targeted edits, or create variations of an image.
Instead of a straight subscription, DALL-E works on a credit system. You get 15 free credits each month and each credit buys you a single DALL-E request.
Here’s what I got when I typed in “an animated rocket blasts off into space from the earth toward the stars”
Not bad right? You could probably do the same thing in paint, but it would take you quite a while to make all of those stars.
More complex images can get a little stranger. Here’s what I got when I typed in “a man in khaki pants records video footage of a rocket launch”
At first glance, this seems okay. Then you look closer and realize the thing on the tripod doesn’t really look like a camera, the “rocket” seems to be printed on a green sheet and there’s a finger sticking out of the back of the cell phone that doesn’t seem like it could possibly attach to the man’s hand.
In fact, any image with people in it can get downright weird. Here’s “an animator working on a video project”
I can imagine using what the AI creates to develop storyboards or visualize ideas in new ways. These are all unedited images, so there’s room to improve them too. Just be careful if you plan to enter the result into an art competition like this man did.
InVideo
Free version creates video with watermark
$15 per month for Business plan with 60 HD video exports
$30 per month for Unlimited
The InVideo creation process starts by asking you a bunch of questions about the kind of project you’re creating. You can upload existing footage to edit or create a new video from a video template or script. You can even paste in a link to a blog. I used our blog on How to Write a Video Script.
Next, it gave me the option to pick the aspect ratio and template for our video. After trying to upsell me on the Business package, it brought me to a somewhat confusing “script” page. When I finally figured it out, I was met with a tool that allowed me to click sentences in the article to add scenes to my video.
Once I’d added all my scenes, I was able to view a storyboard of images generated by the AI tool. You can view the unedited result here. It seemed to have picked images at random, unrelated to the text inputted. Essentially, what we have here is a slideshow with some basic animations. Fortunately, you’re allowed to upload your own images or trade out for ones in their library.
There’s also an “add voiceover” button that allows you to upload a file, record, or automate text to speech. The text-to-speech voiceover is clearly an AI voice. It’s stilted and unnatural sounding, but okay for short, simple text.
If you’re looking for a simple but nice-looking text-based video, this tool is for you.
AI Tool for Avatar Videos
Synthesia
$30 per month for Personal plan
Call for corporate pricing
Synthesia creates a talking-head style video using an AI avatar. You can select a video template from options like how-to video, sales pitch, and learning & development. The interface is pretty simple, just type in your text and go. Your video will land in your inbox within ten minutes.
Be aware that even though they have a “personal plan” you’ll still be forced to input a business email to get your video, @gmail accounts need not apply.
I made a sample video using the demo tool on their website and embedded it below. The woman on the screen looks pretty real. Her head, lips, and eyebrows all move as she talks. Her voice is fairly clear and crisp, but she does struggle with some words, specifically “AI.”
Ultimately, a tool like this seems useful for simple tutorials or other short and emotionally neutral content. Anything with emotion feels odd coming from such a neutral expression. Notice the delivery on “It’s a little weird, isn’t it?”
AI Tools For voiceover
WellSaid
Free 1 week trial
$49 per month for Maker account
Up to $199 per month for Producer level
Custom team plans available
If you need a quick voiceover but don’t have the resources to hire professional voiceover talent, this might be the tool you’ve been waiting for.
Start a project and give it a name. You can even tag it with a client’s name if needed. Then type in your script. You can pick from a sidebar of voice avatars. Hit create, and WellSaid will render your text into voice over.
I was pretty impressed with this tool. WellSaid was the only AI that could actually pronounce the “AI” without phonetic spelling. Take a listen. But even if it hadn’t been that clever, I could have used the Pronunciation tool to type in phonetic spelling. You can also choose from Narration, Promo, or Conversational styles to get a tone and style that best matches what you’re working on.
It may not be the least expensive option, but WellSaid seemed to offer the most realistic voices without a lot of editing.
Murf.ai
10 free minutes of voice generation
$13 per month for Basic
$167 for Enterprise
Another option for AI voiceover. It’s slightly less expensive than Murf, but also has some bugs to work out.
The interface was pretty easy. All you have to do is type or import your script. Choose from more than 120 voices. They have male and female voices with US and UK accents. Once you’ve picked your voice, you can adjust pitch and speed and add pauses. Speeding up the narration did help it feel more natural.
However…
For some reason, the AI had issues understanding one of the five sentences I entered into the script. “What do you think?” was rendered as a slurred mumble. You can hear for yourself.
No matter what I did, including removing the line and retyping it, the AI couldn’t seem to parse that sentence. I had to switch virtual “narrators” to get the audio to come out clear.
AI for Social Media
SocialBee’s AI Post Generator
Social Bee offers a user-friendly solution for effortlessly creating top-notch social media content. Equipped with an extensive array of customizable prompt templates, users can tailor prompts and specify their preferred tone, resulting in content perfectly aligned with their requirements. Once generated, this content can be conveniently scheduled for publication. In summary, it’s a dynamic and effective tool for crafting engaging social media posts.
AI Tool for Text
Copy.ai
Free version for 2,000 words per month
Pro Plan starting at $49/month depending on word count
“Copy.ai is a tool for creators to use AI to generate content. It’s a platform that allows you to create text and images using AI. Copy.ai uses machine learning, which means it learns and gets better over time as more people use it.”
The paragraph above was written by AI. I used a trial edition of copy.ai to start writing this blog post. To start, I had to enter my blog title, keywords, and tone. Then the AI generated some topics for me. I didn’t like all of them. A few were services I’d never heard of or were tools like Lumii that are really just photo editors. So I switched them out for ones I wanted to cover.
It didn’t give me the ability to add subheadings or more complex structure, although you could always click “write more” to get more content on the topic.
When I clicked “generate talking points,” it added bullet points about each of the header topics.
Finally, I clicked “generate content” and got the paragraph above along with a bunch of other paragraphs about AI tools.
I had intended to write about the AI video generation platform Synthesia, but instead got a writeup about the Synthesia piano tool. The section on Mruf.ai seemed to be talking about a completely different software. It seemed to think Murf was an image tool, not an AI voice generator, and that it was developed by Carnegie Mellon University students. It even quoted those three students, although I couldn’t find any evidence of the quote using a Google search.
All in all, Copy.ai may be good for outlining simple topics but expect to do some editing and fact checking before you publish.
AI Tools Are Improving
So okay, maybe the future where creative endeavors are dominated by AI hasn’t quite hit us yet. There are still plenty of kinks to work out when it comes to letting computers create on our behalf. We think the best way to look at these tools is to see them as tools, things that can help you get a job done when they’re wielded with skill.
If you need some help from real, live experts to create your next video project, reach out to us here at IdeaRocket. We’re imaginative and skilled creators who can help bring your project to life. Contact us today.
Photo by Natasha Connell on Unsplash.
