If you want to create original scene from scratch, artificial intelligence can help. Trained on a huge body of data, AI video generators can transform a text prompt into a short video or a movie.

In this article, we research and review video generators in three different categories to find the best on the market. In honor of the Olympics, we have awarded medals to the best AI Video Generators and a few runner ups.

Best Generative AI Video

Winner: 🥇Dream Machine by Luma Labs

If you have surreal scene that you want to generate from scratch, Luma AI's text to video generator does the best with morphing (shapes merging into one another and changing through the video) and representing movement physics. Here's the result for "a girl falls out of a coconut tree."

Dream Machine makes high-quality, realistic videos quickly and with more action than other generators we've tried. Users can generate 5 videos per day, for free.

Runner ups: Pika 🥈 and Runway Gen 3 🥉

The fastest AI video generator that we tried, the 3 second videos made on Pika tends to show less movement. The generated videos look more like moving images. See "a girl falls out of a coconut tree."

The 10-second videos generated by Runway's Gen 3 show more movement, but the generations tend to be more surreal and less physically accurate. We've also found Runway to make videos more slowly. Below, for example, is "a girl falls out of a coconut tree." The body morphs through the video, and eventually the person drops into the sand.

Video edited on Kapwing

Runway Gen 3 also requires a paid account. Runway Gen 2 is free to use (and embedded into Canva), but like Pika the outputs tend to be more static than Dream Machine videos.

❌ Not yet released to the public: Sora by OpenAI and Veo by Google.

We also tried the "Animate" button from Meta AI. Although the results can be fun, they show a very limited scope of motion, more like a GIF than a true video. So, it's not included on our list.

AI Video Maker for Social Media

Winner: 🥇AI Video Generator by Kapwing

Type a prompt and make a video about anything. With added captions and realistic-sounding voiceovers, Kapwing's AI Video Generator is the best for making faceless videos and vertical videos to post on Shorts, Reels, and TikTok. Unlike the generative AI makers, Kapwing pulls in videos from across the web and synthesizes video for you using an AI avatar to craft an original social media video.

Convert a script, article, or topic idea into a full video with captions and smart broll that you can post on social media. You can also define the length, aspect ratio, and text styles of video. Below is an example faceless video that I made for TikTok and Shorts:

Kapwing also has AI Image Generation built in, so you can add generated imagery into the montage with transitions, sound, and effects.

Runner ups: InVideo 🥈and DeepBrain🥉.

DeepBrain has a different approach in that AI Avatars appear in the bottom of each video. However, the performance of the video editor is so bad that it's not possible to easily edit the layers, styles, audio, or visuals. Kapwing, in contrast, is a fully-functional video editor, so it's easy to customize any element of the video.

Best for social media video creation

AI Avatar Video Maker

Winner: 🥇HeyGen

If you're looking to create a "talking head" video from a script, try out the HeyGen app on your phone. You'll have to take a picture to verify that it's you or use one of the stock "Instant Avatars."

The outputs are a bit uncanny as no AI Avatar product is perfect. But it can help you make video footage in a pinch when you want to avoid. If you're struggling to edit the avatar, you can import the video into another Video Editor to make tweaks, combine it with music and other layers, add subtitles, and more.

Runner ups: Synthesia 🥈and DeepBrain🥉.

Best for "AI avatar" videos

Conclusion

AI videos are getting better over time. Soon, social media creators may be able to start out with generating a video in order to increase the quantity of videos they publish to grow a channel.

Reach out to @KapwingApp on X to let us know what you think and recommend new additions to this list!