Generative video models have led to a proliferation of AI slop on the internet. It’s why TwelveLabs is automating everything *but *the video.
On Tuesday, the AI lab unveiled Rodeo, its first application-layer product that allows creatives and consumers to take advantage of its AI video editing capabilities. The tool allows users to find, edit and assemble footage with simple natural language prompts.
Rodeo is built on TwelveLabs proprietary models, Marengo and Pegasus, which work in tandem to contextually understand a user’s footage, down to the emotion, pacing, dialogue, narrative structure and visual sequences.
- To start, users can import their footage, and Rodeo’s agents do the work of sifting and labeling for you. Then, users can simply describe the clips they’d like to retrieve, and Rodeo surfaces them.
- Once the clips are retrieved, users can drag and drop them into the platform’s video editor. Each clip also has an AI-suggested alternative, and a transcript if it contains dialog.
- If the clips that Rodeo surfaced aren’t a fit, you can go back and refine the prompt to make it more specific.
- Once you’re done, files can be exported and edited in post-production software formats, streamlining the hours it takes for video editors to sift through footage.
In a demo, Ryan Khurana, lead of agents and applications at TwelveLabs, showed The Deep View the process of editing down footage with Rodeo, cutting down 40 hours of NASA footage into a 33-second sizzle reel in minutes.
“I really believe in the thesis that people want to use AI not to just conjure videos from scratch, but as a way to take advantage of things they already have,” Khurana said.
The company called Rodeo a “natural progression” of its existing products, which are built directly into enterprise production pipelines, typically for unscripted TV production or documentary companies, and can’t be accessed by individual creatives. Rodeo, instead, targets nontechnical creators who require video-editing tools, such as YouTubers or influencers, a segment which Khurana said presents a “way bigger opportunity.”
AI slop is quickly flooding the internet, with some estimates claiming that up to 50% of content is now AI-generated. Though bringing AI into the entertainment industry is something that artists and creators tend to balk at, Khurana said the goal is to *reduce *the amount of AI-generated slop that’s clogging our feeds, not increase it. “We would never want to build a system that took away creative judgment. That’s not what AI is good at.”
His thesis is that by reducing the time required to collate and edit human-authored content, more authentic content will prevail. Instead of forcing creatives to spend hours weeding through footage, Khurana said, the goal is for Rodeo to supercharge their ability to produce more by casting off the time constraint.
“When the demand for content is much higher than the supply of new content, obviously that gap is filled by a lower tier,” said Khurana. “If we can make the supply of real content increase by unblocking creatives, that provides a more level playing field for good content to get to more eyeballs.”
Our Deeper View #
TwelveLabs’ thesis runs counter to the recent explosion in low-quality AI-generated slop in social media videos and ads. It’s even popping up in professional content, with an AI-generated film called “Hell Grind” debuting at Cannes last week. The prospect has Hollywood so wound up that the institutions behind the Oscars and the Golden Globes had to clarify their rules on how the tech can and can’t be used in order to be considered for nomination. But TwelveLabs' Rodeo is a clear example of how AI could actually make sense in entertainment. It has the potential to lower the barrier of entry for new creators and filmmakers and speed up the production process for professionals. Along with not seeking to substitute for human creativity, as Khurana said, fighting the rising tide of AI-generated content with higher-quality storytelling benefits the people consuming it, especially as it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate real from synthetic.