I get asked about this more than almost anything else at the moment. Usually it’s some version of “with AI doing all this now, do you still even need a full crew?” It’s a fair question, and I don’t think the honest answer is a simple yes or no.
So let me actually break down where I think AI genuinely helps us, and where I think the hype gets ahead of reality.
Where it’s genuinely useful
Editing workflows have changed a fair bit. Rough transcript-based editing, automatic captioning, background noise cleanup, even some early-pass colour matching – these tools save real hours that used to go into fiddly, repetitive tasks. I’m not precious about it. If a tool does the boring 20% of the job faster and just as well, we use it, and that time goes into the parts of the edit that actually need a human eye.
Scripting and concept development is another spot where it’s a decent thinking partner. It’s useful for knocking out a rough first draft of a script structure or brainstorming shot list ideas quickly, the same way a whiteboard session with a colleague might. It’s a starting point, not a finished product.
Where it falls apart
Here’s what AI still can’t do: it can’t read a room. On a real shoot, half the job is picking up on the fact that a client’s spokesperson is nervous and needs a different kind of direction than the last person we filmed. It’s noticing that the light changed in the last ten minutes and adjusting on the fly. It’s building enough trust with someone on camera that they give you a genuine, unguarded answer instead of a stiff, rehearsed one.
Fully AI-generated video content also still has a “look” to it, even when it’s good. It’s getting better, sure, but for anything where a brand wants to show real people, a real product, a real space AI generation isn’t a substitute, it’s a different category of content entirely, with different (and currently more limited) applications.
The honest middle ground
I don’t think the future is “AI replaces video production,” and I also don’t think it’s “AI has no place in it.” It’s more that the boring, repetitive, structural parts of the job are getting faster, which actually means more time and budget can go toward the parts that genuinely need craft – the direction, the story, the actual filming.
If anything, I think it raises the bar rather than lowering it. When the technical grunt work takes less time, the stuff that’s left – the ideas, the storytelling, the on-the-day judgment calls becomes the thing that actually separates good production from average production. That’s not something a prompt replaces.
Where we land on it
We use the tools where they genuinely help our workflow. We don’t use them to cut corners on anything client-facing that needs a real human behind it – real interviews, real direction, real creative judgment. That’s not a marketing line, it’s just where I think the actual value still sits.