Every time I think I’ve absorbed all that AI can do, something comes along that just knocks me over.

Minimax AI is one of those things.

It’s a text-to-video tool that lets you describe a little video you want to make, push a button and BAM… your vision comes to life.

But even Canva has that capability, so I wasn’t excited until I saw what it does with pictures.

Just upload an image and tell it what you want to see. Holy smokes.

This is an image from my speaker friend Anne Bonney (she’s phenomenal, by the way).

She’s a talented guitar player, so I uploaded her photo to the site and wrote “Woman catches a guitar as it falls from the sky. Then she starts playing it.”

About three minutes later, I got:

And then I used another of her images to invite Matthew McConaughey to her podcast (it’s on her bucket list). “Woman is surprised when Matthew McConaughey shows up.”

I added a little nerdy twist to my brilliant friend Patrick Allmond’s headshot. “Drone flies by and man catches it.”

Remember…. all of these were just images, and I simply wrote a description of what I wanted the video to be.

Note: Yes, it does weird things with faces. Yes, it can really muck things up. Yes, it violates copyright and infringes on other people’s intellectual property. But remember: this is about a week old. Things will change.

Enjoy these other samples, and then go play for yourself. They have a great free version right now, but I immediately upgraded to make the videos render faster because I love it so much. It makes me a little uncomfortable that when you pay for it they remove the watermark. I think all AI-generated content should be labeled.

Transforming my manager’s family photo with “Family gets a visit from Santa Claus.”

Making a simple text-to-video clip from “Nerdy cat with eyeglasses poses for selfies.”

Adding fun to an image of my client and me after a keynote. “Women are surprised when a cartoon candy bar walks by.” (That’s not a candy bar, but….)

Animating my favorite wedding photo with “bride does a dance with bouquet.” This was before I upgraded from the free version, so it had the watermark.

And I hate to share this one because it’s so weird, but it’s too awesome. This is a pic of me and my grandfather playing the video game Pong. Note the ashtray on the ottoman next to the console. That inspired me to try “Grandfather and granddaughter playing video game pong and the granddaughter is smoking a cigarette.”

Grossed out? I was, too. So I did “Grandfather and granddaughter share a hug.”