A 50-Year-Old Marketing Pro's Take on AI
I'm 50. I've been making videos long enough to remember when "the cloud" was just the thing that rolled in and ruined your outdoor shoot. So when everybody started talking about AI like it was going to replace us all by next Tuesday, I did what any reasonable Northeasterner does with something new and hyped: I crossed my arms and squinted at it.
Then I actually tried it. Here's my take.
The website that needed a new home
My old website was hosted on one of those drag-and-drop site builders, and that setup was going away. My options were (a) pay somebody a few grand to rebuild it, (b) spend my weekends learning web code, or (c) see if this AI thing was all it's cracked up to be.
I went with (c). I sat down with an AI assistant and basically talked my way through it like I was directing a very fast, very polite intern who never needs a coffee break. Move the pages. Bring the photos over so they live with the site. Fix the blog links that didn't go anywhere. Add a blog. The site you're reading this on right now? That's the result.
Was it perfect on the first take? No. Neither is any shoot. But it was a lot closer than I expected, and a lot faster than option (b).
AI is great at the boring stuff (and there's a LOT of boring stuff)
Here's a secret about video production nobody puts in the highlight reel: a huge chunk of the job isn't creative at all. It's logging footage. Renaming clips. Building bins. Typing out transcripts so you can find the one good soundbite in a 45-minute interview. Adding markers. Chasing down a broken link in a project file at 11 p.m. the night before a deadline.
That's exactly where AI shines. It doesn't get bored, it doesn't get tired and it doesn't mind doing the same thing 300 times in a row. A few examples:
- Transcripts and captions: Premiere's Speech to Text turns an interview into searchable text, so instead of scrubbing through an hour of footage, you search for a word and jump right to it. Captions come along for the ride.
- Premiere's new AI Assistant: Adobe just added an AI Assistant to Premiere (in beta right now). You tell it what you want in plain English and it handles the tedious, multi-step stuff: organizing assets, batch renaming clips, adding markers and more. It's like having an assistant editor who never asks to leave early for their kid's soccer game.
- After Effects gets one too: The After Effects AI Assistant (also in beta) can help reorganize a project with thousands of layers, troubleshoot technical problems and build expressions without you writing a single line of code. If you've ever stared at an expression error message wondering what you did to deserve this, you understand why that's a big deal.
- The paperwork: First drafts of scripts, shot lists, emails, proposals and blog outlines. AI gets me from a blank page to "something to fix" in minutes. And fixing is way easier than starting.
Here's the part that matters: none of that is the creative part. It's the stuff that stands between you and the creative part. When a helper knocks out the grunt work, I get more time for the things clients actually hire me for: the story, the shot, the pacing, the music hit that gives you chills. More time making it good, less time making it organized.
It writes fast. It doesn't write me.
The AI drafted the first blog posts for the new site, and they were... fine. Accurate. Well organized. About as exciting as a PowerPoint on proper stapler maintenance.
So I told it: add some humor, that's more my style. I work hard and I play hard. And it did. That's the part nobody tells you: AI doesn't know your voice until you teach it. Out of the box it sounds like everybody. Your job is to make it sound like you.
The fun stuff: making AI video
The creative side is where I really got hooked. I've been using AI tools to make short-form horror stories for our Nocturnal Chillers YouTube channel and our sister site Signal Room 9. Stuff that would've needed a full crew, a location and a makeup artist with a lot of fake blood can now start on a laptop at midnight.
If you're getting into AI video yourself, two tips from the trenches:
- Check out Seedance. It's ByteDance's AI video model, and the latest version makes clips up to 30 seconds long with the audio already synced. It's one of the ones worth putting on your test list.
- Look into the API route to keep costs down. Most people start with a monthly subscription app that runs on credits, and those credits disappear fast when you're doing take after take. Many of the same models are also available through an API on services like Replicate, fal.ai and BytePlus, where you pay only for the seconds you generate. As of this summer, Seedance ran roughly 25 to 50 cents per second of 720p video that way, depending on the provider. No monthly fee sitting there while you're busy with client work. "API" sounds scary, but here's the fun part: you can ask an AI assistant to help you set it up. Use the robot to save money on the robot.
But here's the thing. Any kid with a smartphone can make an AI picture. Making a story that actually holds your attention for 60 seconds? That still takes timing, pacing, sound design and knowing when to cut. The tools changed. The craft didn't.
What I learned (so you don't have to)
- It's a helper, not a replacement. A really fast, really smart helper who occasionally, confidently gets something completely wrong. Check its work.
- You're still the director. The better you explain what you want, the better it does. Sound familiar? That's every production I've ever been on.
- Hand it the boring stuff first. Transcripts, renaming, organizing, first drafts. That's the fastest win and the easiest place to start.
- Taste is the whole game. AI can give you 20 options in 10 seconds. Knowing which one is good is still on you.
- Age is not the problem. Decades of experience made me better at it, not worse. I know what "good" looks like. I just get there faster now.
And I'm not the only one who sees it that way. In HubSpot's 2026 State of Marketing report, 73.4% of marketers said they see AI as something that helps people rather than replaces them. Meanwhile, 63% of video marketers say they've already used AI tools to create or edit videos (Wyzowl, 2026). So the robots are in the building. They're just not running it.
So should you be scared of AI?
Nah. Be curious. Try it on something small. Let it handle the grunt work so you can spend more time on the stuff that actually needs a human, like ideas, relationships and knowing that the client's CEO hates the color orange.
And if you want video that uses the best of both, real cameras, real people and some AI magic where it actually helps, that's what we do. Check out our services, see our work, or read why your business needs video marketing in 2026.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go ask a computer to help me make a ghost scarier.
Ready to Get Video? (Or Get Lost.)
Tell us about your project and we'll give you a straight answer on what it takes, what it costs and where to start. No jargon, no hard sell, no 47-slide PowerPoint.
Book a Free Consultation