It’s impossible to ignore all the talk about AI. Some people fear it. Some people are angered by it. Some people think it’s wonderful. Others are approaching it with caution.

I’m pretty ambivalent. I understand why people are excited by it, but I also think there are a lot of negatives, including the ethical implications, the environmental impact, and the fact that we don’t really know enough about what issues could arise in the future.

That said, I am well aware that AI is going nowhere. It’s not a passing fad, and it’s only going to get more advanced and more commonplace. Ignoring its existence would be a mistake, and if I don’t start learning more about it now, it’s going to become harder to catch up.

I’m not completely new to AI - I’ve played around with ChatGPT, and I’ve used various tools to do tasks such as clean up audio, generate images, create transcriptions, and so on. But I wanted to see whether I could do something more advanced.

So I took a post I wrote for social media and attempted to turn it into a video using free AI tools.

Here’s the original post:

Once upon a time, there was a frustrated freelancer.

No matter how hard they tried, they just couldn't attract their ideal clients.

They were highly skilled, qualified and knowledgeable in their field. They acted honestly, ethically and with integrity. And they added lots of value to the businesses they worked with.

But they just weren't getting the clients they should.

So they sought out advice on how to find those elusive clients.

First, they spoke to a successful-looking guy called Tom.

"Oh fair freelancer, why do you look so frustrated?" asked Tom.

"I can't get the clients I want," replied the freelancer.

"Aha! Then you need a fancy website."

And so the frustrated freelancer went away and got a fancy new website.

But still, their ideal clients did not appear.

Next, they met a confident-looking bloke called Dick.

"Oh fair freelancer, why do you look so frustrated?" asked Dick.

"I can't get the clients I want," replied the freelancer.

"Aha! Then you need to get on LinkedIn, and Facebook, and TikTok."

So the freelancer went away and invested hours learning how to use the many, many platforms.

But still, their ideal clients did not appear.

Next, they were approached by a self-proclaimed guru called Harry.

"Oh fair freelancer, why do you look so frustrated?" asked Harry.

"I can't get the clients I want," replied the freelancer.

"Aha! Then you need my ridiculously overpriced course, which will teach you how to build a six-figure business overnight (but only if you then go on to buy more of my snake oil)."

So the freelancer went away and broke down in tears because everything was so bloody overwhelming and confusing.

Then, one day, they came across an intelligent, witty, kind, caring and highly skilled mentor called Lisa.

"Oh fair freelancer, why do you look so frustrated?" asked Lisa

"I can't get the clients I want," replied the freelancer. "I’ve tried everything – website, social media, blogs, emails – nothing works!”

“Well, that’s because your marketing and sales process is pants,” Lisa explained. “But don’t worry. I can teach you how to fix it so you can attract, nurture and convert more of the clients you want.”

And so, the frustrated freelancer handed Lisa a modest bag of gold.

And for the next 12 weeks, through a combination of one-on-one Zoom sessions, WhatsApp conversations and various resources, Lisa worked with the freelancer on their sales and marketing process, provided feedback, training and support, and helped them take back control of their business.

At the end of the 12 weeks, the freelancer was no longer frustrated. They had a strategy to attract, nurture and convert their ideal clients, and they had the skills and confidence to do it.

And they all lived happily ever after.

The end

And here is the video I ended up with:

To my surprise, my little experiment produced a lot of learnings and gave me a lot to think about.

The process involved several steps, lots of patience, various tools, AI lies and limitations, some manual work, and a lot of learning. And this is what I want to share with you – my honest thoughts and opinions on AI, the reality of using it when you’re not familiar with the tools, and its implications for the creative industry.

Lots of people share the finished product, but don’t go into huge detail about how they got there. I think this gives the impression that it’s really easy to get AI to create the content you want.

In reality, you can’t just put a vague prompt into AI and get the result you’re hoping for. You need to give specific instructions and clear prompts. Sometimes you have to go back and tweak the prompts. Sometimes you have to use different tools or do things in stages to get the result you want.

To start with, you need to decide what you are creating. There’s not much point in creating content just for the sake of it. You need to know who it’s for and what its purpose is.

Do you want to raise awareness of something, get engagement, promote a product or service, provide information, educate, inform or just entertain?

Of course, you could use AI to generate an ideal client profile or to come up with a marketing strategy, and even to generate content ideas.

I already had a starting point for my AI experiment. I wanted to turn one of my social media posts into a video. I thought it would make a good video script, and the fairytale theme would work well as a cartoon.

I’m not completely new to AI – I’ve played around with ChatGPT, and used various tools to do various tasks such as clean up audio, generate images, create transcriptions, and so on. But I wanted to see whether I could do something more advanced.

Testing out copilot

I’ve never used co-pilot before, so I decided this would be a could starting point.

After asking it a few questions about how it was different to ChatGPT, finally asked: “If I give you a script, can you generate a video?”

It explained that it couldn’t generate the video, but it could help with other aspects of it, such as storyboard and images. So I uploaded my script and answered a few questions. After a few instructions and prompts, it generated my first image. I was actually pretty happy with the image and was excited to see the rest.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t realised there was a limit on how many images you could generate in one day, and I reached my limit pretty quickly. I did manage to get copilot to create a storyboard plan for my video, so I decided to test out ChatGPT.

Switching to ChatGPT

I used the storyboard copilot generated to start creating images in ChatGPT. I had to tweak the prompts a bit to get the right style for my images, and by the time it finally gave me something I was happy with, I’d reached my image limit. I decided to come back the next day to pick it back up.

Unfortunately, the next images it generated had a completely different character from the first couple, so I had to pretty much start again. And I reached my limit before they had finished.

On day three, I decided to just pay the £20 to upgrade so I could generate all the images in one session.

I had to ask for some of the images to be amended. The first version of the ‘Lisa’ character (me) was too old, and my hair colour changed from one image to the next. There was also a typo on the title slide that I almost didn’t spot. But eventually, I ended up with some images I was happy with.

Adding animations in Canva

I already pay for the pro version of Canva, so I’m not sure whether the animations are free or not. I had to add the animations to each image (things like steam coming out of the coffee mug, stars twinkling, and ‘like’ icons coming out of the laptop).

This took ages because you can’t search the animations by keyword (or at least I couldn’t find a way to do it) so there was a lot of scrolling through and testing different animations until I found ones I was happy with for each image.

Voiceover with ElevenLabs

I was going to do the voiceover myself, but decided against it, so I searched for an AI tool that would do it for free. I went with ElevenLabs.

The free version had a decent range of voice options, but there were far more available with the paid version. I stuck to the free version (because the whole point of the experiment was to keep it cheap).

I originally used different versions for the different characters, but this was a bit of a faff and didn’t sound brilliant, so in the end I just used one voice for the whole script.

Putting it all together in Microsoft ClipChamp

I have ClipChamp as part of my Microsoft package and have used it a few times for basic video editing. It’s not nearly as good as some paid tools, but it’s good enough. I uploaded the animated images and the voiceover, then matched the animations to the voiceover.

Being familiar with ClipChamp helped, but it’s relatively easy to pick up if you’re new to it.

Limitations and frustrations

I was trying to do this on the cheap. Not because I'm a cheapskate, but because there are so many different tools available, I wanted to figure out which would be most beneficial before I started throwing money at them.

Unfortunately, there are limitations on the free versions, which makes it very hard to test them long enough to know whether they can actually provide the result you want.

The tools weren't always as intuitive as I would have liked, and there was a lot of trial and error with prompts. I also had to do some stuff manually, and the whole process took a fair few hours.

ChatGPT tells lies

After I'd generated my images, I wanted to know what else ChatGPT could help with, so I asked whether it could add animations to the images. It told me it could.

Not only that, it offered to create a full feature-length video with voiceover, sound effects and subtitles - all I needed to do was provide the script.

I was pretty impressed as I didn't think that was possible, but I told it to go ahead.

It then asked me a whole load of questions about style, size, narration, and whether I wanted short clips and images for socials too. I answered all the questions, and it finally started making the video. Or at least that’s what it told me it was doing.

I was sceptical, but I went with it. I headed out for a run, and when I came back, no video had appeared, so I asked for an update.

That was bullshit.

The ZIP never appeared. So I asked if it really had created a video and whether it was even possible. It admitted it couldn’t do any of the stuff it had suggested so I asked why it had told me it could.

What a stupid bloody feature! Why offer to do something that’s not possible? Seriously. Who thought that was a good idea?

It’s not surprising that so many people don’t trust anything AI says.

My honest thoughts on AI and what it means for those who work in the creative industry

Ignoring all the terrible aspects of AI (such as the ethical and environmental impacts), I can see why people like it. It can do stuff much faster than a human could, and some of what it does is actually pretty good. But it has limitations.

And despite what AI fans might want us to believe, it's really not very easy to create great content with AI. Or at least it’s not easy when you’re not used to the tools and you’re using the basic versions.

Unless you have money to spend on the pro versions and a load of time to learn how to use them, it’s probably just as cost-effective to pay a professional to do it.

And if you are a creative, you now have a choice.

You can continue doing what you’ve always done without using AI, or you can learn how to use AI to generate high-quality content for your clients. Either way, make what you create worth paying for because if your clients can do it themselves in 5 minutes with free AI tools, they won’t be clients for much longer.

You don’t have to use AI to generate content - I certainly won’t be using it to write my blog posts or emails for me. But if you do want to use it, there are some things to consider.

There are loads of tools on offer

There’s more to AI than ChatGPT. In fact, the number of different tools on offer is pretty overwhelming. So the first step really is finding the best tool for the job. Luckily, AI can help with that. Ask Copilot, ChatGPT or Gemini “what is the best tool for doing X” and it’ll give you a list. You can then do your research to find which one fits your skill level and budget.

The output is only as good as the input

You can’t just stick a vague prompt into an AI tool and expect it to generate something amazing. You need to give it clear instructions and context. Be specific. This is where patience is key because it can take a while to get it right. And you may need to ask for several iterations before you get something you’re happy with.

Be aware of limitations

Free versions of AI tools will usually have some kind of limitation, such as the number of images you can generate within a set period or the selection of voices available for video narration.

AI isn’t always accurate (or truthful)

As I found out, what AI says it can do and what it can actually do don’t always match up, so you might have to specifically ask it to only suggest things that are possible. And you won’t always get accurate information from your AI tool, so be prepared to fact-check if you’re using it for research or writing.

AI can make mistakes

Check your content for any mistakes. I almost didn’t spot the typo in the original title scroll (and yes, I did spell it right in the prompt):

Your content will be similar to other AI-generated content

AI isn’t thinking for itself - it’s using content that already exists to deliver what you ask for. That means that if you don’t use original ideas or customise the content, you’ll end up with content that looks or sounds the same as any other AI-generated content.

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