The New Era of Video Is Here (and It’s AI-Generated)
What It Means for Filmmakers and the Line Between Real and Fake
This week all social networks have been flooded with mind-blowing AI generated images and videos.🤯 New releases of GPT-4o image generation, Runway Gen-4, Luma AI DreamMachine, Meta Mocha and ByteDance DreamActor-M1 are massively improving the quality and the capabilities to create realistic scenes with camera movement, lighting dynamics, spatial coherence, and even emotional tone. This isn’t just content—it’s cinema, crafted through AI prompting. 🎬
What once required a production team, expensive equipment, and weeks of editing, can now be done by a solo creator with a laptop, a few subscriptions, and a good idea.
This opens up a whole new world for advertising and filmmaking — but it also presents a major challenge for traditional agencies and creators. The filmmaking industry, worth billions of dollars and built around actors, set designers, directors, producers, and post-production teams, is now being disrupted at its core.
Note: This image has been created with OpenAI Sora
It also raises serious concerns around deepfakes, misinformation, reputation and non-ethical content. As AI-generated videos become more realistic, the line between real and fake is blurring—and fast. Humans (and even current detection systems) are already struggling to tell the difference. In this new reality, we’ll need to train ourselves to be more critical, more skeptical—constantly asking: is this real, or was it generated? The burden of verification is shifting, and with it, our entire relationship with visual truth.🤔
I'm naturally optimistic, and I like to believe that tech companies, startups, governments, and users will find ways to ensure AI video generation is used responsibly. We have to.🙏 At the same time, I truly believe this technology can unlock a level of human creativity we never thought possible. It has the power to equip independent creators and small businesses with tools they’ve never had before—enabling them to produce high-quality content and finally compete with major brands on more equal terms.✨ 🚀 What do you think?
Take David Blagojevic, for example. He produced a complete ad concept Ad for KFC using tools like Runway, Pika, Kling AI, Google DeepMind Veo2, Luma AI, OpenAI Sora—all for less than $400 in subscription costs.
🎥 Check it out:
Another great example of the impact of this technology is this hilarious video from Internet of Cats, featuring cats working at McDonald’s, is a perfect showcase of how imagination and creativity, powered by AI tools, can bring completely new formats to life. What once felt like a wild idea can now be turned into actual, engaging, and viral content. 🎥 Hit play:
🎥 One last example: The new Meta x Mocha AI-generated video showcases characters speaking with highly realistic emotions and mouth movements — finally bridging the gap between stunning visuals and believable, human-like speech animation. It's a major leap toward truly lifelike digital storytelling.
We're witnessing the beginning of a seismic shift—where creativity is democratized, production is accelerated, and the line between real and synthetic content is increasingly hard to define.
AI-generated video is not just a cool tool for creators; it's a force that is transforming entire industries, from entertainment and advertising to journalism and education.
The opportunities are immense, especially for independent voices and small businesses ready to embrace this wave. But with great power comes great responsibility—and navigating this new era will require not only creativity, but also critical thinking, ethical awareness, and a renewed commitment to visual integrity.
The future of storytelling is being rewritten—and we’re all part of the script 💡👀
Bonus track: Top AI Video Startups
Not only tech giants are dominating the AI video revolution. An increasing number of startups are disrupting video creation and editing with innovative, accessible, and creator-friendly solutions that have the potential to significantly impact the market.
🔹 Synthesia (UK)
Founded in London in 2017 by a team of AI researchers and entrepreneurs from Spain, Germany and the Nordics, Synthesia aims to empower anyone to create video content—without cameras, microphones, or studios. By radically transforming the content creation process through AI, they are unlocking human creativity at scale.
Synthesia raised a $180M Series D at a $2.1B valuation, cementing its position as one of the early leaders in synthetic video production. BTW I had the opportunity to attend a fascinating fireside chat at Slush between one of the founders, Lourdes Agapito, and Reshma Sohoni founding partner at Seedcamp, and I was truly impressed. You can watch it here.
🔹 Pika (USA)
Founded in 2023 in San Francisco by Demi Guo and Chenlin Meng, who dropped out of Stanford’s AI PhD program to build the company, Pika has quickly become a rising force in AI video. Their platform enables text-to-video, image-to-video, and AI-powered editing—all through simple prompts.
They recently announced an $80M Series B, bringing total funding to $135M. The round was led by Spark Capital and included notable investors such as Greycroft, Lightspeed, and even actor Jared Leto.
🔹 Haiper (UK)
Founded in late 2021 by PhDs from Oxford and former DeepMind researchers—Haiper is developing cutting-edge generative video models.
Backed by Octopus Ventures, Haiper raised a $13.8M round and is focused on pushing the boundaries of visual creativity and realism.
🔹 Munch (Israel)
Founded in 2021, Munch helps brands and creators turn long-form videos into short, high-impact clips optimized for platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels. Their engine analyzes content and aligns it with the latest social media trends to maximize reach.
Munch reached $2M ARR in just 8 months and raised a $7.2M Seed round led by A Capital, with participation from Liquid2, Cardumen Capital, and Remagine Ventures.
🔹 Vidext (Spain)
Vidext is an AI-powered video generation platform focused on improving corporate communication. It combines simplicity, automation, and personalization to help companies manage and generate high-quality content in minutes.
The startup recently raised a €2M funding round backed by 4Founders Capital, Draper B1, and Sabadell Venture Capital, marking a strong step forward for the Spanish AI video ecosystem.
🔹 YC 2024 & 2025 Startups to Watch
Recent Y Combinator batches have brought fresh energy into the AI video space:
Magic Hour (YC W24): Combines the best AI video models into a seamless workflow. Users can easily create high-quality videos by selecting and customizing templates.
Overlap (YC S24): Builds multimodal AI agents for all things video—searching moments, generating clips, or analyzing entire libraries.
Argil (YC S24, France): Focused on the creator economy, Argil enables users to generate perfect social media videos—featuring themselves or avatars—in under 2 minutes.
Mosaic (YC W25): A no-code platform for building multimodal video-editing agents via a node-based canvas, bringing true agentic workflows to content creation.
So there's no doubt—we’re going to see a lot more exciting innovation in the months ahead.🚀
Hope you enjoyed this post! If you're curious about the AI revolution and want to stay ahead of the wave, subscribe to Surf the wAIve for fresh insights, tools, and stories every week.🏄♂️ 🌊