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Video is shaping up to be a busy area for AI developers, leaving users with a growing range of solutions to play with. And while these solutions weren’t developed with HR in mind, they put AI video capabilities in the hands of more people, allowing for a wide range of experimentation.
For example, OpenAI said Sora is meant to “enable people everywhere to explore new forms of creativity, tell their stories and push the boundaries of what’s possible with video storytelling.”
To work with these tools, users enter prompts as text, with an option to include images. They can work with multiple characters, different types of motion and detailed images. According to developers, the underlying models understand how people and items behave in the physical world, which allows for realistic movements.
Yet these applications are limited in what they can produce, at least for now. Sora, for example, limits video clips to 20 seconds and won’t allow use of real people as the basis for a video. Google’s Veo has challenges with creating realistic videos and maintaining consistency in complex scenes or those with complicated motions.
Despite their limitations, tools like Sora and Veo don’t spell doom for professional producers or learning specialists. They could encourage more users to experiment with new ways to include video on websites, documents and presentations.
Already, AI-generated video is proving its worth in learning. Research published by UCL Knowledge Lab's Daniel Leiker et al on arXiv found AI-generated videos can be a viable substitute for traditionally produced educational videos in business. To reach this conclusion, the researchers divided their subjects into two groups and had one work with a traditional video (showing a human instructor) and the other with video featuring an AI-generated instructor. The study found no differences in performance or learners’ reactions between the two efforts.
The Promising AI Video Market
Video production is certainly an area that deserves developers’ attention. Nearly three-quarters of trainers said they use video as a part of their delivery, according to Research.com, and Fortune Business Insights forecasts the global enterprise video platform market will be worth $76 billion by 2032, up from about $19 billion in 2023.
The use of video generators is small but growing. The market for AI-based video generators was valued at about $552 million in 2023, reported Spherical Insights & Consulting. That’s expected to rise to about $3 billion in 2033, a CAGR of approximately 18%. Driving the demand are technology advancements, increasing use of social media and streaming services, as well as the need for engaging and customized video, the company’s report said.
That demand won’t be met by brand names like Google and OpenAI alone. Smaller developers, such as Pika Labs and Synthesia, are already building AI-based capabilities and audiences. A number of learning platforms, like Coursebox, ELB’s Lectora and LearnWorlds, already incorporate AI into their authoring tools.
Some of these smaller platforms differ from Google and OpenAI by focusing on individuals rather than businesses. For instance, they may offer toolsets that simplify the process of creating videos with AI. Pika provides a library of characters, props, backgrounds and other elements to select from, which can then be gathered by AI in order to produce a scene.
Related Article: Beyond the Hype: AI Is Entering the Age of Viable Products
Short Videos for Short Attention Spans
AI can't solve every difficulty faced by training and development departments — that's a given. There's also the question of interest: Only 28% of learners give training videos their full attention, according to research by the digital video company Kaltura. Instead, 67% said they sometimes skim through the videos, watch them without sound or listen while they’re doing something else.
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Another factor here is the user’s age. Nearly 70% of millennials and 73% of Gen X learners skim through educational videos, compared to 54% of baby boomers.
It’s clear that the AI video generators we have today aren’t the final iterations, but they remain a promising avenue. At best, in their present state, they provide learning professionals tools to produce brief batches of content that can be incorporated into online courses. Microlearning and providing such learning opportunities in the context of work has been an area of growing interest among businesses — and it's one that's projected to grow.
