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 generators seem to be the next big thing in the spotlight. Unleashing the power of AI, Google and Meta announced their latest achievements in AI video creation, called Imagen Video and Make-A-Video. They can make videos with simple words instead of real shots by cameras. However, we get nothing except AI video demos on their websites.
When we think things are slowing down, some companies and even startups join this game and release AI video generators available to use for everyone. In this article, we delve into 10 innovative AI video generators and how they transform video creation. And at the end of the post, we'll show you some free and open-source AI video generators that you can use for fun. Just read on.
1. 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.
At the moment, we can only see several demos on its website and join the waitlist via Runway's Discord. Fortunately, its spoken person, Kelsey Rondenet, said Runway Gen-2 will be "providing broad access in the coming weeks."
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. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
Final Thoughts: Is AI Video Creation Promising
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.
