“AI video tool” covers two genuinely different categories, generating new footage from scratch versus editing footage that already exists, and conflating them leads to picking the wrong tool.
AI video generators create entirely new footage from a text prompt or reference image, with no existing source video required. The right category when you need footage that doesn’t exist yet.
AI-assisted editing tools work with footage you already have, automatically cutting to the best takes, removing filler words, generating captions, or extending a shot’s background. These enhance real, existing footage rather than creating something from nothing.
If you have real filmed content and need to work faster, an editing tool is the right category. If you need footage you don’t have and can’t practically film, a generator is. Using a generator to “fix” existing footage, or an editor to create footage from nothing, is fighting the tool’s design.
The line is blurring as editing platforms add generative fill, and generation platforms add editing controls. Check what a specific tool actually does well. See Google DeepMind’s Veo page as one current generator.
