No AI Won’t Replace Video Editors Any Time Soon.

“Automated video editors will intelligently merge simultaneous streams of events” reads the subheading for an article on spectrum.ieee.org

The articles talk about how much better smartphones are becoming for video recording; this is indisputable. But clumsily attempts to connect the dots as to how, “The next frontier of consumer video creation will be powered by AI, not by a professional videographer or dedicated amateur.”

We’ve seen “AI” type tools creeping into pro and amateur video for many, many years. The Roto Brush tool in After Effects and PluralEyes for syncing audio as examples. But tools that “intelligently and automatically combine video from multiple smartphones and other video devices, including action cameras, drones, gimbal cameras, or virtually any other connected camera into one finished production.” sound as sci-fiction as the metaverse.  

“Think of several members of a family recording video of an event. First, they use an app to join a shared project. When they start recording, software on their devices automatically determines what each person is filming, tagging the content with detailed metadata.” reads the article. 

Sure, now think of an AI making decisions about how those videos are to be ordered? Think really hard about that. If you’re talking tripod-mounted cameras with good lighting, and constant recording of a single speaker on a stage, cuts between cameras could be arbitrary. 

The moment more than one thing is going on, an AI seems ill equipt to make creative choices, now or in 10 years. If you have several people on stage, the AI could just cut to whoever is speaking. That would only take production back to before the J cut & the L cut.

The more complex a wetting becomes, the less capable an AI becomes at making these decisions. Sometimes, a reaction to a speaker is more important than seeing the speaker.