Meta today (October 4) announced a new AI-powered video and audio generator that rivals OpenAI's Sora and ElevenLabs' AI audio tools called Movie Gen, the generator creates realistic video and audio based on user prompts or edit existing video and images with text based on user prompts

While there is no timeline yet for when MovieGen will be generally available, sample productions shared by Meta include images of thunder overhead in the desert, animals swimming, and a child running on a beach with a kite generated by text prompts

This software is a very useful tool

The software suite can also generate audio, including ambient noises, sound effects, and background music synchronized to the image, Meta said in a blog post Meta said [Movie Gen can be used not only to generate new clips, but also to edit existing video footage In one such video, Meta had the tool replace a floating lantern with a string of bubbles In another video, the tool inserted pom-poms into the hands of a man running in the desert, and in a third video, it replaced the man's clothes with an inflatable dinosaur costume, showing that the text prompts could be further tweaked Meta also showed that it could generate video of a person using only still images and text prompts

Chris Cox, chief product officer of Meta Platforms, said that a full release is still some way off

“We are not ready to release it as a product right away because it is still too expensive and the generation time is too long, but the results are becoming so impressive that we wanted to share where we are,” he wrote in Threads

With this announcement, Meta has become the latest major tech company to push full speed ahead into the AI field In recent months, both Google and Adobe have announced AI video generators to compete with third-generation AI video tools from major media generation start-ups

In its announcement, Meta shared blind test data showing that Movie Gen compares favorably to products from startups like Runway, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, and Kling So we will have to wait and see if Movie Gen ranks in our list of best AI video generators, but the early results are promising