Captions, the video editing app backed by a16z, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Captial, has launched a new feature that takes existing unedited videos and adds custom graphics, zooms, music, sound effects, transitions and motion backgrounds based on the content.
AI editing has some limitations: The video must be vertical with only one person in the frame, speaking.
Importantly, if you don't have such a video or it's not your style of videography, you can still create a short prompted video using Captions' AI avatar and later send that video to the AI editing feature to create a fully edited video with various transitions and effects in minutes.
Captions co-founder and CEO Gaurav Misra told TechCrunch that when he left Snap in 2021, he was looking to make the video production process easier, with communications as its primary goal.
“Our main goal is to help people get their message across. If you think about what it takes to get your message across in a video, it's complicated. It starts with thinking about what you actually want to say, preparing a script, recording the video and editing it to make the clip engaging,” he said of the idea of building a pipeline of features that use AI to create videos.
AI-powered video production
Misra said that through Captions, the company wants to offer people three types of video recording tools. First, it aims to provide a best-of-breed camera toolkit to assist with recording. Second, it also offers editing tools, such as AI corrections, for manually recorded videos. And finally, Captions features a generative layer that doesn't require users to record videos.
The company currently offers 12 AI characters, but hopes to add three to four to its portfolio every week, with the ultimate goal being to allow users to create their own AI creators.
Misra believes these tools will be primarily used by consumer-focused businesses for sales, marketing and communication channels. Companies like D-ID and Synthesia allow organisations to create digital avatars for their videos. Earlier this month, TikTok also allowed creators to create AI avatars, along with offering its own AI characters for ads. Misra believes captions are of higher quality and that all video creation tools are accessible on a mobile phone.
Tension between AI and creators
The Caption app's feature set makes creating videos incredibly easy: With just the prompt “Dangers of AI for Creators,” and the tap of a few buttons to create and edit, I created the video below: It's a bit strange to hear an AI avatar talk about the dangers of AI.
Image credit: Caption
These tools make it easy to flood social media and the internet with content, for better or worse. This can create discoverability issues for creators who spend hours creating content.
Misra acknowledged that this is a valid concern, but believes that people using AI tools to create videos still need to ensure that the content of the videos is good and that people will find interesting.
“You can mass-produce content, but you need a unique message and story to stand out, and that's what people are going to spend a lot of their time on. Digital music has made it easier to make music without playing an instrument, which is a good thing, but it hasn't made the quality of music worse; it's just made it easier for more people to become musicians and raised the bar on creativity,” he said.
The company plans to release new features for AI avatar-based video creation, including a Skit feature that will allow two (or two of the same) avatars to talk to each other.