How to create an AI video in 2026, start to finish: pick a format, write the prompt, generate footage, add voice and captions, then publish — the step-by-step.
Last verified · 2026-09-15 · by Moe Ameen
"Create an AI video" sounds like one action — type a prompt, get a video — but a video people actually watch is the output of a short workflow, not a single click. A text-to-video model hands you a raw clip, usually eight to thirty seconds, often without the exact captions, voice, aspect ratio, or branding a real post needs. That clip is the middle of the process; the work on either side of it is what turns it into content that ships.
This guide walks the whole thing in order: deciding which kind of AI video to make, writing the script and prompt, generating the footage, adding voice and captions, checking it before it goes out, and publishing it in the right format on each platform. It applies whether you're making a talking-head explainer, a cinematic generated clip, or a short cut from a long recording — the three main routes differ mainly at the generation step, and the rest of the workflow is shared. Do it once deliberately and you'll have a repeatable process instead of a one-off novelty.
Several jurisdictions and platforms now require AI-generated or significantly AI-altered video to be labeled — the EU AI Act's transparency rules and platform policies on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and others among them — so check the disclosure requirements for where you publish. Separately, using a real person's face or voice (including a cloned voice) requires their consent, and generated footage can still infringe third-party trademarks or likenesses; don't publish an avatar or voice you don't have the rights to use.
The tutorial above is a stack of separate tools — a model to generate, something for voice, a captioner, a scheduler — and the friction is in the handoffs between them. Kompozy runs the whole thing as one click-path, because it's a full content generation and multi-platform publishing engine, not a single-stage video tool. In practice, you don't pick a generator and then wire up the rest: you pick a video format and Kompozy produces the finished, captioned, on-brand video end to end.
That format menu maps directly onto step 1's three routes. For an avatar/talking-head video, choose [Persona Shorts](/glossary/persona-shorts) — a HeyGen presenter plus auto-captions and optional B-roll — or Persona HeyGen for longer multi-scene pieces. For a branded on-screen look, choose [Persona Frames](/glossary/persona-frames), which composites the avatar as a movable layer inside a pixel-exact [HyperFrames](/glossary/hyperframes) template. For the clipping route, Kompozy cuts vertical shorts from your existing long-form footage. For lightweight formats there are Listicle Videos and Marketing Shorts. You give it one prompt; steps 2 through 5 — script, generation, voice, captions, reframing, and branding — happen inside a single render, governed by your [Persona Brief](/glossary/persona-brief) so the voice and angle stay consistently yours across every video instead of resetting each session.
Then step 7, the one that turns AI video from a novelty into a habit, is [Autopilot](/glossary/autopilot): it reformats each finished video per platform and fans it across eight social platforms plus blog and email from one queue, behind a per-post review gate (step 6) where you approve or rewrite before anything ships. Pricing is credit-based: Starter ($99/mo for 5,500 credits) covers a solo creator or small brand's video cadence; Pro ($299/mo for 18,000 credits) suits an agency running video for several clients across platforms; Enterprise is custom. The point isn't that Kompozy beats a dedicated frontier model on a single cinematic shot — it's that for the real job, publishing on-brand video everywhere every week, it removes the seams that make the multi-tool version collapse.
A short social video can go from idea to published in well under an hour once you have a workflow — a few minutes to script, a few generation passes, a finishing pass for captions and branding, and a schedule step. The first one takes longer because you're learning the tools; the value is in making the process repeatable so the tenth video takes a fraction of the time of the first.
You can assemble a best-of-breed stack — a text-to-video model for shots, a separate voice tool, a separate captioner, and a scheduler — which gives maximum control but leaves you managing the handoffs between them. Or you can use one engine that collapses script, generation, captions, and multi-platform publishing into a single workflow. Solo creators and small teams usually want the second, because their bottleneck is the seams and the volume, not model quality.
Don't stop at generation. A distinctive script and angle, a consistent persona or voice across videos, real burned-in captions and tight pacing, and a recognizable brand style are what separate your video from the flood of raw model output. The workflow around the model — not the model itself — is where a video stops looking like everyone else's AI video.
Increasingly, yes. Platform policies and laws like the EU AI Act now require disclosure when video is AI-generated or materially AI-altered, and the exact rule depends on where you publish. When in doubt, label it — a clear disclosure costs you nothing and protects against demonetization or removal, whereas an undisclosed AI video that gets flagged can cost you the account's standing.
Many generators have free tiers, but they typically cap resolution, length, and monthly generations and add watermarks, and they only cover the generation stage — you'd still assemble voice, captions, and publishing separately. Free is fine for testing whether AI video fits your workflow; a sustained, on-brand publishing habit across platforms usually needs a paid plan that covers the whole pipeline, not just the clip.