Can AI be used to make videos and make money on YouTube? We tried and we are not so convinced

“I want to show you one of the easiest ways to make money right now.” Cadenboof2, a young TikTok user, has clear ideas and it explains itself in a minute: thanks to artificial intelligence, and in particular a ChatGpt who is surprising everyone for his ‘human’ answers, the boy claims that in a few minutes, and in a few steps, videos can be created that can guarantee easy earnings through views on YouTube.

We followed hers instructionswhich reached one million views on Twitter:

1. We asked ChatGpt what is “the best strategy to drop everything, change your life and travel the world”.
2. We copied and pasted the answer on Pictory.ai, which associated our text with the most appropriate images and a soundtrack appropriate to the subject matter.
3. We also pasted part of the writing on Synthesia.io, which generated short clips in which avatars enunciate them in rather fluid and correct Italian.
4. We used Veed.io to remove the background from the avatar video. And then we inserted the avatar cut out on the moving images chosen by Pictory.ai.

The result is this:

Is it credible?

We think not: the avatar is still a long way from replacing the nuances and intonations of a human’s voice.

It’s interesting?
Not really: the advice provided by artificial intelligence is, on the whole, rather trivial.

It was easy?
Only partially: it took us a moment to generate the text. To put everything else together, however, a considerable ‘human’ effort was needed which required the use of four different platforms.

Can it all be done for free?
Up to a point: ChatGpt is free for now, but it’s speculated that it won’t be for long. Synthesia.io, for example, in the “free” mode allows you to create clips with avatars starting from a text of up to 200 characters, which corresponds to less than twenty seconds of video. Pictory.ai and Veed.io, on the other hand, allow you to do a complete job but imprint a watermark, a brand in short, on the video that is produced. All platforms, of course, allow you to remove these limits by paying a monthly subscription.

Ultimately, it seems unlikely to us that a system of this type could replace, in the short term, human-made content. The tools used can be, if anything, a valid tool at the service of man, who to achieve a result that is just sufficient – as in this case – still has to intervene several times to correct repetitions, mistakes and errors of artificial intelligence.