Text-to-Video AI Companies
Platforms to generate videos for ads, product promotions, presentations and social media
Advancements in AI have been rapid. It has the potential to reduce the time, money and effort it takes to complete several of our weekly tasks, both at home and at work.
In this piece, we share information on companies that provide Text-to-Video Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities.
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What is Text-to-Video AI?
Text-to-Video AI is a set of artificial intelligence (AI) tools that let you create videos in minutes by using text prompts, i.e. words to describe the scene/s that you want to create. The prompts provide cues to the program which responds by generating a video that (ideally) closely matches the description you provided.
The last couple of years (2023/2024) have seen a spurt in the number of startups that have developed proprietary text-to-video AI generation platforms. These platforms continue to improve and release updated versions every few months.
The available features for creating and editing videos vary by platform and support some of these customizations, giving users the flexibility to make it their own.
Video tone, style, format
Change elements in the video such as location, background, characters and other objects
Clip extensions, video enhancers and looping ability
Sound effects, lip syncing, voiceovers and AI avatars
Adding frames, animations, transitions
Other members of the text-to-video AI family are
Script-to-Video - Very similar to Text-to-Video but using a longer script that tells more of a story
Image-to-Video - create or upload an image and animate it. Or use multiple images that can be blended into a video by the AI tool
Video-to-Video - transform your original or existing videos with new animations or customizations like face swaps or character and background changes
Lower cost, time savings and variety
Using Text-to-Video AI platforms can help individual creators, professional creative or marketing teams and companies lower their costs of development, reduce the time spent in creating content and get access to a variety of tricks and hacks for generating and editing videos. Most platforms have fairly affordable subscription plans.
Directory of Text-to-Video Platforms
Click here to see the complete list of 25 text-to-video companies with website links and pricing information. While not an exhaustive list, it includes many of the main players in the industry.
Most of the Text-to-Video AI platforms that have launched in the last year (2024) use advanced Generative AI to generate high-quality videos for creative storytelling based on user-written text prompts.
Videos generated by these text prompts or images, in case of Image-to-Text, are short in duration, lasting from 4-12 seconds with some possible extensions. Users can choose from an array of features to customize their content. Typical use cases include short-form videos for social media posts, advertisements and product promotions.
Majority of the companies offering these platforms are startups. Not to be left behind, larger technology incumbents like Meta, Google and Adobe have recently launched their own versions which are known to be feature-rich and resolution-mighty.
In addition to generating brand new videos, filmmakers, ad producers, artists and amateurs can use the editing tools also available on these platforms to enhance their original, longer form content. Take the example of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that uses Text-to-Video AI company Runway’s platform to handle the graphics on the show. Many of the platforms offer API services to their clients which makes the video generation process even more seamless.
While the recent crop of Generative AI startups compete with each other to gain dominance in the Text-to-Video AI market, a few companies like Synthesia and Fliki have been around longer. They use more traditional AI tools to help their enterprise and non-enterprise clients create longer-form videos for corporate training, sales enablement, marketing and other purposes. On these platforms, clients can use different AI avatars, voiceovers, language translations, subtitles and other such features to customize their content. Some of these mid-sized companies are also now switching to applying Generative AI.
Quality of Generated Videos
There are many factors that affect the quality of the videos generated by AI such as video resolution, camera controls and other such features that enable a user to achieve granular customization. Each platform offers different capabilities.
Adherence to prompt is another factor that could affect quality. Some platforms have better generative AI capabilities in that the video created by the tool ‘adheres’ or matches closely with the text description that you input into it. Others have room for improvement.
How text prompts are written can also affect the quality of video output. Some platform websites have guides on how to use text prompts more effectively and in alignment with their specific AI capabilities. MiniMax AI, for example, has an entire section on its website titled, ‘How to Write MiniMax AI Prompts’. Hotshot AI has a prompt enhancement feature that can adjust and add more context to your prompt automatically which enhances the quality of the video output. It might take beginners some trial and error to figure out how to use text prompts to create videos.
Another issue that could come up is AI ‘hallucination’ when unwanted details present themselves in the video such as extra fingers or misplaced objects. We can expect that most platforms will resolve some of these issues as they continue to improve and release updated versions.
Do you have rights to the content you create on Text-to-Video platforms?
In most cases, yes! You have commercial rights to use and monetize any content you create or edit using Text-to-Video AI platforms. This applies to anything posted on social media or advertising content. But, there can be caveats.
The platforms also have guidelines on what you can and cannot upload as input to generate or edit your videos. For instance, you cannot upload illegal content or activity, content related to terrorism, abuse, racism and other such restrictions as part of the input data. See an example of policy here from Haiper AI.
A best practice is to always check usage rights and all terms and conditions before proceeding with the use of any platform.
How to select the right platform for your project?
If you are considering using a Text-to-Video AI platform for your creative needs, here are some of the factors you should weigh. Since most offer free plans, you could narrow down your list to the top 3-4 and test them out using the free plan before signing up.
Improvements in AI are fast with new version launches every few months. Since many of the Generative AI companies are still early stage, there can be bigger differences between different platforms for now. As time goes by, we could expect more convergence in features.
Broad Purpose - at a high level, are you looking to edit videos or create them? Some platforms might have more and better editing tools.
Specific Purpose - would the videos be used for advertising, product placement and other short-form marketing or are you looking to create longer-form content for corporate training? Synthesia or Fliki might be better suited for the latter while Runway or Pika might work well to create short videos with niche content.
Features - this is an important one and closely linked with the specific purpose for which you need to select a Text-to-Video AI platform. Depending on the type of content you want to create or edit and the level of customization you require, some platforms might have features that better meet your needs.
Luma Labs Dream Machine includes video looping capabilities while Pika lets users select 'Scene Ingredients', i.e. characters, backgrounds and other elements that you want to include in your video. Pika will combine those into a video. You can also upload your own images and get Pika to blend them into a scene. Krea lets you upload 3+ images and generate multiple angles or versions of those objects. Make sure that you research each platform for its unique features.
Pricing - most platforms have comparable pricing for similar features for most users. However, many platforms offer API services to their enterprise developer clients which can incur additional costs depending on usage.
Quality of videos - this one is tricky because you don’t actually know how you feel about output quality, adherence to text, sufficiency of resolution and others unless you actually try out the product. This is where using the free plan to test out the platform can be a useful first step.
Flexibility - as mentioned previously, Text-to-Video AI platforms are quickly innovating and releasing new versions of their product. Individual users or smaller teams might have an easier time switching platforms than larger teams and enterprise customers if and when the time comes. For the latter, switching costs might be higher if there are many corporate dependencies.
Enterprise Users - On that note, many companies offer customized pricing plans for their enterprise customers. LTX Studio and some others also include collaborative virtual workspaces for live editing for teams.
You will notice that we don’t offer comparisons on features or ranking. This is for multiple reasons.
First, improvements in AI are quick and competition is high. Companies release improved product versions very quickly. The improvements are often significant. Thus, a solution that looked better compared to another a few weeks ago could quickly change its ranking today.
Second, different users have different criteria that matter to them and their unique use case. We encourage you to use this as a starting point to finding the one that suits your needs based on your own research.
That said, we offer paid services that help you vet vendor solutions based on your specific needs. We can also onboard vendors and train your team on switching over to the new technology. Please contact us to discuss conscisolutions@gmail.com