Last week Google upped the video game with mind-blowing text-to-video capabilities with Veo 3. With review headlines such as, “This is scary!” and “Google Veo 3 is WILD,” the new release is seriously exploding the brains of video creators because it can not only generate video, but it adds AI-generated dialog.

If I didn’t tell you that these were AI generated, I bet you wouldn’t be able to tell.

Video Generation Experiment

For today’s AI experiment, I tested Veo 3 and compared it to four other text-to-video tools with the same simple prompt with my favorite theme of nerdy animals with glasses:

“An office filled with cats and dogs, all wearing eyeglasses. They are all working at computer desks. Realistic, stock image, dynamic, busy office, some animals are chatting and taking notes.”

I used the basic settings on all of them and took the first for the comparisons. If I made the videos for real use, I would have tweaked them (probably for hours).

Here are my findings, ranked from best to the absolute worst.

Google Veo 3: A-/B+

Since Veo 3 was in the headlines, I started there. (Make sure you have the sound on for this clip, but the rest of them have no sound.)

Verdict: Wayyy cool that it added sound, but what’s with the morphing cat/dog/rabbit thing? And where did the cat’s shirt go? The colors are nice and deep, and the quality is the best of all the videos.

You need at least Google AI Pro to try out Veo 3 with limited credits. It’s $20/month. Google AI Ultra has lots and lots and lots of credits as well as all kinds of other AI stuff — but it should, because it’s a jaw-dropping $250/month. But that does come with YouTube Premium and storage and all kinds of stuff. But still. That’s a lot.

Envato VideoGen: B/B-

My favorite stock image site, Envato Elements, now has AI-generation tools when you have a subscription ($200/year). (It made my Ultimate AI Toolkit List.) I didn’t have high hopes, but I was pleasantly surprised. It’s so dang charming! Of course, you have to ignore all the misshapen animals, but the color and vibe are adorable.

That being said, the prompt asked for a realistic image, so the storybook style is actually a step in the wrong direction. But still. So fun.

ChatGPT Sora: B-

ChatGPT’s Sora named this “Furry Office Frenzy,” which made me laugh. It was the only one to showcase the office chatting. But the perspective seems off — like the cat’s chair on the table. And those cat’s hands! So weird. It did look a little futuristic, so that was cool.

Sora is included in paid versions of ChatGPT (starting at $20/month).

Runway: D-

Runway is actually one of the best video generators, but I think my test criteria put it at a severe disadvantage. The tool doesn’t let you enter a simple text prompt. You have to add an image first. So I generated an image from that prompt then used that to generate the video. The bad thing was that the generated image (below) was not good at all, so that made the video even worse.

Neither the image nor the video followed the prompt of the nerdy glasses, and it’s just not all that interesting. But I did get a kick out of the mail delivery panda/cat thing, and she did stop and chat as the prompt instructed.

The free version of Runway gives you 125 credits (one time). Standard pricing starts at $12/month.

Canva: F

Oh, Canva. You do so many things well. Video generation is not one of them. I mean, what??? This might give me nightmares. The cats look like puppets from a first-graders’ art class. So wrong.

I *think* the AI video generation tool is available in the free version of Canva, but it’s hard to tell. But that really doesn’t matter. Don’t use it.