u/grace_eva

Suppose a $100 budget is approved for your team. Let’s say, a 14-day budget, and you have full freedom to subscribe to the AI tool that can help you to generate revenue, let’s say, you can choose, free or paid, according to your requirements, but from $100, you have to collect $150 as revenue in 14 days, now how your AI tools list looks like?

This is genuinely one of the harder marketing problems right now, and I don't think enough people are treating it with the seriousness it deserves. Generation Z.

Gen Z has grown up watching content get more and more produced, more and more optimized, more and more artificial. They have developed a sensitivity to anything that feels engineered to manipulate them that older audiences simply don't have. And AI, used badly, produces exactly the kind of content that triggers that sensitivity instantly.

So here's the tension. AI makes content production faster and more scalable. But Gen Z responds to content that feels unscaled. Raw, specific, opinionated, slightly chaotic. The opposite of what AI defaults to.

The brands getting traction with Gen Z using AI are not using AI to make better ads. They're using AI to understand the subculture deeply enough to make content that doesn't feel like an ad at all.

How are you approaching this? And has anyone found an AI workflow that actually produces content Gen Z engages with instead of scrolling past?

If someone has no experience in video production. No team. Just me, a laptop, and a bunch of AI tools I am still figuring out. Everyone talks about consistency, hooks, and retention. I get the theory. The mistakes you made in the first 3 months that nobody warned you about. Now, AI is doing everything, like image designing, editing, video generation, and many more stuffs. AI has literally changed the video industry, which was completely different 2 years ago.

If you've been through this starting phase, even a year ago, I'd really appreciate hearing what you know now that you didn't know then. One piece of advice to those who are looking for career opportunities in video marketing in 2026.

Everyone is talking about whether AI can replace UGC. I want to talk about what happens after you have made the switch and you are actually living with that decision. Have you seen anything that was just unexpected from your side?

I have heard that businesses are getting lower costs, faster production, and more variations to test. AI UGC is also changed, and still changing. Avatars are becoming more realistic, voice and tone are improving, and hand movements and gestures are now controllable. Tech is improving a lot. If we discuss the AI ugc in 2025, that literally sucks for every business, because realism was missing there, but now, I can say, the AI UGC tech stack has improved a lot.

What do you think about the AI UGC? Anything you can share, positive insights, or something you are still struggling with. Looking for fruitful insights from your side.