Saw some stats yesterday that got me thinking. average tiktok user spends 95 minutes a day on the platform. youtube shorts hit 70 billion daily views. reels is the fastest growing format on instagram.
The content industry is trying to feed this machine and it's struggling. brands need hundreds of video variations per campaign. creators have to post daily to stay visible. the traditional pipeline, script, shoot, edit, publish, just can't keep up with the volume.
AI video slots into this pretty naturally. not as a replacement for human creativity, just as a way to handle the volume problem.
The tools right now: Runway for high-end production. PixVerse and Pika for rapid iteration. Kling for realistic motion. none of them are making feature films. but they're filling the gap between "i need one video this month" and "i need 50 videos this week."
The economics are shifting too. a 30-second social ad used to cost $500-2000 to produce. AI versions are coming in at $0.15-0.50 per video. the quality gap is real, human-made is still better. but when you need 50 variations for A/B testing, the math starts to change.
I don't think the question is whether AI replaces video production. It's whether the sheer volume the market demands forces AI adoption regardless of quality. I lean toward yes. But I'm not sure where the ceiling is on how much AI content people will actually tolerate before they tune out.
[link] [comments]