With the maturation of AI’s applicability, the cost of performing many tasks have reduced drastically and jobs continue to be eliminated partially or altogether. 

ChatGPT was already an integral part of my businesses’ work flow. But what happened last week was on an awesome new level. 

How I really experienced the power of AI tools, beyond ChatGPT

I recently subscribed to a new AI-enabled tool to automate the optimization of my brand’s pay-per-click ads on Amazon. 

Before that, two of my virtual assistants were spending 1-2 full work days every week, manually executing the same optimizations. Plus, my own time to correct mistakes. 

Expenses aside, this was a headache that hindered my ability to focus on strategic decisions for my businesses.

This 1 task alone used to cost me $512 monthly in salary payments. On the other hand, at $99/month, this AI tool (I use Adtomic but there are plenty of options) costs a fraction of salaries, completely automates this task, AND eliminates human error. 

Now, I wake up, take 15 minutes to approve the system’s AI suggestions, and my time is freed up to work on other priorities. A welcome change, to say the least.

AI generated videos

Having experienced the power of AI this close to home, I started to think about other ways I could automate repeatable tasks while scaling up content creation.

A founder once told me that she was using HeyGen and BHuman to make customized, AI generated video greetings in her sales outreach to greet each recipient by their first name. 

Imagine, you send 100 sales emails, and all 100 recipients open the email with a video showing you (the sales person) greeting them by their first name, followed by an introduction of the product you’re trying to sell. Without this automation, you’d have to make 100 different videos. And, I bet none of your competitors do this. 

How I use AI avatars for product videos

I was in the process of creating various product story videos for our listings, and decided to give both tools a go.

I recorded the voiceover, and, in an effort to save our customers from seeing yet another Instagram Reel with Elsa the founder in it (lol), I used HeyGen to generate an AI avatar to “deliver” my voice.

This is my AI avatar delivering my recorded voiceover:

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To scale this up, we recorded different scripts into voice overs using another AI tool (Eleven Labs), and paired recordings to different AI avatars, to make even more video variations. 

Music and lifestyle stock photographs were added to bring the story to life and showcase the healing powers of GNight Fetcher’s comfort cards made for pet parents. This is the final video:

Can you tell this video is made 100% of AI??

By layering an AI voiceover tool on top of another generative video tool, I was able to remove myself fully from our video production process. 

This, to me, is so powerful because AI not only saved me time, as did the ad automation tool, it unlocked the ability to produce 10x more product videos whilst removing my own involvement or need to hire an actor. 

There are limitations, however, to this method. For example, I ideally wanted the AI avatar to be recording herself “selfie-style” to better fit in with today’s creator economy. The tool, for now, really is limited to an avatar filmed standing from the same angle.

While this avatar won’t get any Best Actor nominations, for the purposes of this particular series, done is better than perfect. 

Also, I remain bullish that avatars will in fact be winning Oscars in the near future.

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