When it comes to video production, AI tools have a lot of promise, but the next big thing always seems to be just around the corner and not quite ‘there’ yet.
I recently wrote about what I think the biggest trends will be in video production in 2025, and, naturally, AI for video topped the list.
This got me thinking - I thought it would be fun to unleash my inner nerd and keep track of the various AI tools that we’re using here right now on an almost daily basis. Not necessarily the attention-grabbing headline flashy tools – but the ones that maybe us creative-types already take for granted. These are the tools that you may not be aware are already AI augmented.
So, I’ve made a little list of all the AI tools that we’ve used in the past week or so, to help speed up or improve our video production workflow.
Ready to geek out?! Here we go…
AI voiceovers
We’ve been using AI voiceovers for a while – and they just keep getting better and more realistic. Recently we’ve been using AI generated voiceovers as guide voiceovers on a set of instructional videos. Once, this would have involved manually recording a temporary scratch track somewhere quiet. And then re-recording sections whenever the script was amended. Now we can just pick our voice and type in the new sentences when we get script amends through.
We find that they do the odd thing every now and then (and for me, there’s still nothing like directing a good old flesh-and-blood human for a fully nuanced final performance!) – but its quickly become an essential tool that speeds up our workflow when blocking out edits.
AI powered subtitling
In the past generating subtitles for your video was a time-consuming process involving manually transcribing the content and editing the subtitles in the sequence.
But Adobe’s Premiere Pro editing software allows for a simplified, AI enhanced, audio-to-text transcription workflow. While this feature has been around in various video editing software products for a while now, it’s the kind of AI augmented tool that has become invaluable in our daily editing workflow.
AI audio clean-up
Another new feature built into Adobe’s Premiere Pro editing software allows you to clean up audio and enhance speech in just a few steps – again powered (under the hood) by AI. It removes unwanted noises and makes pretty much any voice sound (almost) like it was recorded in an audio studio.
While in our experience it can be a bit temperamental and inconsistent, it’s certainly been useful for getting acceptable results quickly, and making it more efficient to get to a good audio mix. It does still require that good old fashioned human ear to check it at the end though.
AI image generation
We’ve been using various tools (Midjourney and Adobe FireFly) to generate images for storyboards from text prompts. We’ve also had fun with some AI face-swap apps to add some humour to presentations and decks.
AI generative fill
We’ve been using Photoshop’s generative fill to create some additional room around images that we needed to pan over in videos.
It’s also been useful for re-formatting videos from landscape to portrait by creating extra imagery and extending scenes. We’ve also been using it to touch-up images and remove distracting elements from photos.
Chat GPT
It might seem an obvious one – but Chat GPT is an invaluable tool for anyone involved in video production. From helping with script writing and advertising copy, to more mundane tasks like summarising voice overs to draft accompanying captions – it’s a tool we’re using all the time in our studio.
Photoshop’s object selection
No more laborious cut-outs? Not quite – but the AI powered object select tool certainly speeds things up – especially quick cut-outs for mock-ups.
AI music creation
We’ve used Suno AI to create bespoke music tracks (complete with humorous lyrics sung by realistic sounding voices) from simple text prompts for an internal video presentation. We also combined this with Adobe’s AI assisted ‘remix’ feature in Premiere that lets you more easily amend the length of a music track in your editing sequence by automatically selecting the best bits. No more manual chopping and looping!
AI rotoscoping
There are some very specialised AI rotoscoping tools on the market (used for cutting out or isolating moving parts of footage) – but one tool we’re using all the time is After Effects built-in roto-brush. Powered by Adobe’s Sensei AI, it has been trained on large data sets of footage, and makes cutting out moving subjects (especially people) in video quicker and easier. As with a lot of these built in AI augmented tools – it does, of course, need some human refinement. But it’s a real time saver.
AI eye focus tracking
We shot a simple interview for one of our clients using our in-house camera kit. But did you know that the eye tracking auto-focus feature on Canon’s newer cameras is enhanced with AI trained firmware. It works like a charm ensuring that focus is locked to your subject’s eyeballs. It will even detect and lock onto other objects, birds and pets!
Photo by Erik Mclean / Unsplash
So – there you have it – just a little insight into some of the video production AI tools we’ve been using over the past few weeks. These tools have mainly helped with time-efficiency, improving workflows, and enhancing the quality of our final videos.
AI for video production is definitely here to stay. What AI tools are you using in your work?
Producer and Head of Broadcast
