6 Reasons AI Video is Not Quite There Yet...

AI video tools like Sora and Runway are trending. The promise of saving time and money by using it for all your promotional media needs is tempting, but the results usually fall short. Just type into a prompt “woman walks confidently through office and shakes coworkers hand,” and you’ll probably get something sort of realistic—just ignore the too-perfect skin, the extra pair of eyeteeth and the fact that she moves in with an unnatural motion and has six fingers when she extends her arm to shake her coworker's hand. Then the shot descends into the weird and surprisingly comical realm of AI generated corporate eldritch horror—lights flicker, the camera warps the background into non-euclidean space as it pans down with strange pacing, their hands mesh together into a tentacled blob, and eventually settle into something that vaguely resembles a hand shake. At this point, you likely would have been better off just using the stock footage the AI analyzed to create this mess.

Yes, AI can whip up some, attention-grabbing visuals, but that’s often the problem. It's often grabbing attention, because of just how surreal it looks. If you’re trying to build trust with real customers, you don’t want your brand’s video to feel like a fever dream set deep in the uncanny valley.

Even though AI generated video and imagery has come a long way over the last few years and continues to improve, here's why it might not be quite ready for your next business ad campaign.

1. It Doesn’t Understand Your Business

AI doesn’t know your values, goals, or audience. It just guesses based on patterns. The result? Generic-looking people doing things that sort of resemble work in a soulless office with a layout that doesn't seem to totally follow the rules of time and space. If that’s your brand, go for it. If not, you might want to work with a human creative.

2. It Often Gets the Vibes—and the Hands—Wrong

Faces drift. Fingers multiply. Furniture is impossibly arranged. Keyboards have layouts conducive to typing in alien languages. A car with no discernible make or model glides in with no real-world logic applied to its wheels. AI visuals don’t just look surreal—they can feel more than a bit off. And “off” isn’t great for customer confidence. Off-putting is never on-brand.

3. It Can’t Show Your Product, Team, or Space

AI is fine with vague stand-ins—a generic bottle, an approximation of home interior, or a made-up logo. Now, if you need your actual storefront, real staff interacting naturally, or a product shot that doesn’t morph slightly halfway through? It’s not reliable for that. For anything specific or recognizable that doesn't feel like a simulacrum after few seconds of movement, you likely still need a real camera in the real world.

4. You Can’t Tweak What Doesn’t Exist

AI doesn’t give you raw footage and there's no physical set that can be adjusted. If it gets something wrong, there’s no redoing a take with new direction for the actor or changing the camera angle—you just regenerate and pray the next pass is less haunted by the call of Cthulhu.

5. It Looks Like a Tech Demo, Not a Marketing Tool

AI video sometimes has a plasticky sheen—like a dreamscape sculpted out of digital wax and lit with otherworldly light. It might be flashy, sure... But on closer inspection, flawed and not built for clarity, pacing, or showing what your business actually does.

6. Strategy Can’t Be Prompted

An algorithm might be able to generate a concept shot of tiger in a lab coat, but it won’t build you a message that sells. A real creative team starts with goals, not just spectacle—and builds something your audience can actually follow and relate to.

GRAVITY ATTRACTS

AI video can be fun to look at. So are optical illusions. That said, if you’re promoting your business, selling a product, or trying not to accidentally creep out your audience, real production still wins in terms of consistent results.

At Gravity Lens, we help businesses build content that’s watchable, purposeful, and made by people who know what human hands look like. We've had success in applying AI to limited parts of the production process, such as denoising existing footage, transcribing dialogue, stabilizing a shaky shot or even assisting in creating blog articles like this one. However, we do not rely on AI for the important task of image generation and visual storytelling. We recognize that real world talent is the best way to get real world results. Let’s make something real - and something that doesn't grow extra appendages halfway through.