Video still reigns as the most potent form of digital marketing. YouTube remains the second most visited website in the world, second only to its parent, Google. More than 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute: that’s 720,000 hours of video every day.

People remember 95% of a message when they watch a video compared to about 10% when reading it in text. On Instagram, Reels get 76% more engagement than a photo post. And video can be easily shared today across all social platforms.

These stats lay the foundation as to why AI video advancements could be invaluable to real estate agents and their marketing.

Just as AI image generators have replaced the need for a stock photo service, new AI video generators like Sora and newcomers like Artlist continue to blow our minds.

Not ready for most agents - yet  

Sora has been added to most paid ChatGPT accounts, including the more secure and private Teams version. But it’s still limited to medium resolution (720p) and 10 second clips, without paying extra.  

Yet for some social media posts, that’s all you’ll need. If you have the time and basic editing skills, you can splice together live video you shoot with video B-roll (secondary footage you can voiceover) to create some powerful social video posts without a big dollar spend.

But it still is a big time spend and that’s something most agents do not have.

There are some video tools that automate the editing process but that still takes more time and money that many agents aren’t willing to spend.

Costs will come down, AI editing will advance, and eventually an AI video “easy button” will be created and that’s really what agents want – and need.

Video from a photo

Yet even today it’s mind-blowing what a few words can created with one of the top AI video generators like Open AI’s Sora, Hey Gen, and Runway. We just played around with the newcomer, Artlist.io.

First known for its stock footage, video templates, royalty free music and sound effects, and recently added AI tools like AI voiceover and image and video generation.

Artlist’s approach is text to image creation first, then turning the image into a video, including providing direction: soft lighting, camera pans, zooms in, etc.

Before AI, turning a static image took an inordinate amount of time and skill. Now lifelike videos are being created in seconds. Here's a free sample from Artlist (sign up and you get 5 free images and 1 free video) of an agent talking to buyers – here, and a video of an agent showing a home from Sora - here.

While AI video creation is hard, takes a lot of bandwidth and isn’t readily automated for the average agent to use, that day is getting much closer. (-Kevin)