By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-12-30 21:20:33 | Updated at 2025-01-02 18:21:12
2 days ago
AI is rapidly making huge leaps forward with video production — and for those who know how to harness its power, it can be an extremely lucrative tool.
Helping in this regard is New York and London based Synthesia, a company whose AI tech is so advanced they can produce AI-generated versions of their clients that look, sound, and gesticulate just like them and are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.
To make unlimited AI videos, a creator only has to upload a two to three minute clip of themselves reading a script. From that, Synthesia’s tech can generate endless videos — without ever setting up a camera again.
“Essentially once you record yourself… you can use it to make any video,” Alexa Zovdun, an account executive in Synthesia’s Midtown office, told The Post.
“It could take you like 30 seconds to two minutes [to generate a new video], depending on how much personalization you want to happen.”
Zovdun has personally used the software to create videos advertising its capabilities to potential clients in five different languages — four of which she doesn’t actually speak. In total, Synthesia can translate into 140 languages, allowing influencers to break down barriers and reach new audiences.
“This takes all the hassle [of making a video] away,” Alexandru Voica, Head of Policy at Synthesia, told The Post. “No matter the time of day, no matter how you feel or where you are, you always have the version of yourself that sounds and looks the best.”
Mark Cuban is among the company’s investors. So far, most of Synthesia’s clients are corporations looking to create training videos without paid actors, but Zovdun says it could also revolutionize how social media content is made.
“I can save myself time by just typing a script, instead of me spending 30 or more minutes in a studio,” she said. “This is working smarter, not harder.”
Plenty of content creators have already figured out ways to enhance their businesses by leveraging AI — from using AI to enhance video creatio, using robo-assistants or even creating a totally artificial online influencer.
Matt Par, for instance, says he makes $20,000 to $35,000 from YouTube ad revenue every month, with AI doing much of the lift.
Although he’s been a YouTuber for a decade, the 24-year-old has been able to offload the vast majority of the workload in just the past year.
“I was actually super against using AI for any reason,” Par, who lives in Florida, told The Post. “But now it’s pretty crazy what you can do.”
Par runs twelve informational YouTube channels on topics like travel, finance, and health. All are “faceless” channels, meaning they are narrated videos over stock footage.
He uses AI to come up with video ideas, write scripts, generate background videos, edit footage, come up with titles and descriptions, generate thumbnails, and even narrate the videos with an artificially generated voice.
Par uses free and subscription-based services like ChatGPT, MidJourney, and CapCut. All he has to do is a quality check and cleanup at each step along the way.
“I can’t rely on all these AI tools 1,000%, but that way I have a starting point,” Par, who has more than 750,000 subscribers on his personal YouTube account, said. “It saves me a lot of time.”
A video that would take six hours to make before using AI now takes about an hour with it.
It also saves him on hiring freelancers. In the past, he’d invest around $300 per video between scriptwriters, video editors, and voice actors. Now those roles are all automated.
“AI is replacing people’s jobs already,” Par said. “It allows me to do it all myself.”
He says most other YouTubers do the same: “I think they all use AI, even the ones that are super against it and make videos about it being the end of the world.”
Meanwhile, Sfiso Sthole, a 19-year-old YouTuber from the United Kingdom, became curious about just how easy it would be to generate an influencer from scratch with AI, so he made an Instagram, created an AI blonde bombshell, and generated videos of her — mostly scantily clad in various tropical settings.
Within thirty minutes he had made forty videos, the equivalent of a month’s worth of content.
“I essentially had created a new influencer, and you can do that in about 20 minutes,” Sthole told The Post. “[The videos] immediately got views, and then you can funnel those views to whatever you want — a brand deal, sales.”
Over the course of two weeks, Sthole got 150,000 views without any promotional efforts whatsoever.
“The attention is immediate because essentially you’ve got the most attractive human being on the planet, and that seems to perform really well on Instagram,” he said.
“If you’re not attentive, which most people aren’t, you will not notice [this is AI] at first glance.”
After getting so much attention so quickly with minimal time or effort, Sthole realized he could easily monetize his fictitious influencer through sponsored content or ad revenue — but he felt that would be immoral.
“This was just a personal experiment for me,” he said. “As soon as it started working, I decided I’m not going to do this.”
In the end, his own beautiful AI creation gave him the creeps and he stopped producing new content in March.
This story is part of NYNext, a new editorial series that highlights New York City innovation across industries, as well as the personalities leading the way.
“I felt like it was all kind of wrong,” Sthole admitted. “This is scary.”
Fellow YouTuber and software company owner Chase Reiner is also using AI, but has a different strategy.
He uses AI to generate images of himself advertising AI tools and companies that he is an affiliate for. Reiner then uses AI to automatically post those images across more than 40 social media platforms to attract customers.
Then, he uses another AI tool that helps him follow up with leads on potential online customers. When someone signs up for a subscription to one of those AI tools, he gets a commission.
“[My customers] want to utilize AI to start a business or start some sort of side hustle,” Reiner, 30, of Arizona, told The Post. “As they sign up for the different tools, they sign up for full accounts. That’s how I make money.”
His method generates $50,000 to $60,000 per month in income — all by using AI to advertise AI, he says.
“I think we’re gonna get to the point where there’s going to be so much AI content that we’re not going to be able to tell anymore who’s real and who’s fake,” Reiner said.
While social media influencer Isabella Kotsias doesn’t make AI generated content, she still uses it as a “free coworker,” as part of her multimillion dollar social media empire.
Kotsias, 27, started social media channels for herself and her dog Meeka during the pandemic that have blown up to have ten million total followers. Between sponsorships, ad revenue, and selling merchandise like plushy toys of her dog, she rakes in a healthy $100,000 a month.
Her online career made her a millionaire by 25. It also allowed her to buy her dream car, a G Wagon, and her dream house in Miami in cash.
She quit her gig as a dental assistant and works with her husband, and she’s been able to keep the business in the family thanks to AI.
“I don’t have an office with a bunch of employees. We literally are doing it all in house,” she told The Post. “We didn’t use AI while we were building up our businesses, but now it’s literally like a free coworker.”
Over the past year, she’s used AI to pick products to add to her e-commerce store, to come up with video ideas, to help write posts for platforms like Threads, and to predict social media trends before they go viral with tools like TrendAssistAI.
Day to day, she says it picks up 25% of her time-lift.
“It’s like having an employee,” Kotsias said. “I find myself tossing it tasks and questions, like, ‘Hey, can you write this for me?’ ‘Hey, can you do this?’”
Looking back to the start of her social media career, she wished she had access to AI sooner: “If I had the AI originally… then I 100% would have done this all so much faster.”
