What a year of generating AI video every day taught me

For over a year now, I've generated AI video or images every single day. Not as a hobby — as practice. Every time a new model drops, I test it the same day: product shots, people, environments, motion, edge cases. At this point I've probably run more generations than most "AI video agencies" have in their entire portfolio.

Here's what that year actually taught me. No hype.

1. AI is a phenomenal complement, and a mediocre replacement

The best AI work I've done isn't pure AI. It's hybrid: a real shoot for the parts where trust matters — faces, hands, your actual product — and AI for everything around it. Background replacement, set extension, impossible environments, cleanup. That combination beats both pure-camera and pure-AI on cost and quality, almost every time.

Pure AI shines in a narrower band than the demos suggest: product films, atmosphere pieces, stylized ads, previs. The moment you need a specific person saying specific words for two minutes straight, or your exact product with every detail right — the camera wins, and it's not close.

2. A 100% AI project once cost me more than shooting it

This is the part the AI hype accounts skip. I did a fully-AI project that, on paper, should have been cheap: no crew, no location, no gear. In practice, past a certain complexity, every revision becomes a generation lottery. You don't "tweak" an AI shot — you re-roll it and hope the new version keeps what was good about the old one while fixing what was wrong. It usually doesn't.

Directing AI is a real skill, and it's a different skill from directing a shoot. On a shoot, take 47 is a small adjustment from take 46. In AI, take 47 is a stranger who vaguely resembles take 46. Budget accordingly.

3. The models got good at beauty faster than at truth

Every generation of models makes prettier pictures. Lighting, composition, atmosphere — stunning, and improving fast. What's improving much slower: consistency. The same character across shots. The same product from two angles. Text that doesn't garble. Hands doing precise things. Physics that behaves.

This is why AI product videos work so well (beauty is the job) and AI testimonials are still risky (truth is the job). Match the tool to the task and you'll never be disappointed.

4. Speed is real, but only with decisive clients

Yes — an AI product film can deliver in days, not weeks. But that speed evaporates the moment feedback turns into "can we try it completely differently, five more times." AI compresses production time, not decision time. The fastest AI projects I've run had clients who knew what they wanted.

The bottom line

AI didn't replace my cameras. It replaced the parts of production that were always the most boring and expensive: building sets, waiting for weather, renting locations for a three-second shot. What it can't replace — and won't for a while — is taste. Knowing which shot serves the story. Knowing when the "perfect" AI frame is actually wrong for the brand.

That's the job now: not operating the tool, but knowing where to point it. A year of daily practice taught me where. Here's what I offer →