VEO Flow and the future of video: What brands need to know
With the launch of VEO Flow, Google has thrown its weight behind generative video, and creative production may never look the same. The platform lets users prompt entire video scenes using text, with control over lighting, visual style, camera angles, audio, and even how multiple objects interact. From a cost and time perspective, the potential upside is clear: brands can now turn a brief into a piece of content in days, not weeks - without hiring full production teams. But while the possibilities are exciting, they’re also complex.
With the launch of VEO Flow, Google has thrown its weight behind generative video, and creative production may never look the same. The platform lets users prompt entire video scenes using text, with control over lighting, visual style, camera angles, audio, and even how multiple objects interact. From a cost and time perspective, the potential upside is clear: brands can now turn a brief into a piece of content in days, not weeks - without hiring full production teams. But while the possibilities are exciting, they’re also complex.
VEO Flow and the Future of Video: What Brands Need to Know Now
By Helen Swarbrick
A New Production Model, With New Challenges
One of VEO Flow’s biggest selling points is creative agility. Brands can generate and iterate on multiple versions of a video, trying different styles, tones, or formats without reshooting. That unlocks potential for A/B testing, content versioning, and experimentation that would be too expensive or time-consuming in traditional pipelines.
It also opens the door for more people to contribute to content creation. Once you’re subscribed, anyone in a team can start prompting, making high-quality video more accessible to non-experts.
But accessibility shouldn’t be mistaken for simplicity. In practice, VEO demands real creative skill. Prompts are often ignored or misinterpreted. Details appear that weren’t asked for. Even strong outputs need polishing: editing lighting, adjusting audio, refining perspective and pacing. In short: this is still a craft of art direction and technical editing. It just looks different.
As one creator recently put it: “It takes one minute to get 90% of the way there - and one hour to fix the last 10%.”
Creativity Isn’t Dead. It’s Evolving
There’s a common fear that AI will replace creative roles. In reality, it's shifting where and how that creativity happens. The best VEO results come from precise, well-considered prompts and that still requires someone who understands storytelling, tone, framing, and audience.
Creative directors, art directors, motion designers, these are the people who will push VEO to its limits. AI won't replace them. But it may reduce demand for large-scale shoots, studio time, or junior-level production support. That has real implications for the talent pipeline in video.
What Brands Need to Watch Out For
VEO Flow may be powerful, but it’s not perfect. Like other generative tools, it can produce uncanny results: an unnatural gesture, a strange smile, a distracting error. That might sound minor, but in brand comms, small details matter. A weird video can do more than underperform - it can damage credibility.
Audiences are increasingly sensitive to AI-generated content. If it looks fake, feels cold, or raises ethical red flags, it can erode trust. We’ve already seen AI images go viral for the wrong reasons and brands caught in the backlash.
And there are deeper risks, too:
Brand Safety: AI can misrepresent prompts, creating problematic visuals that weren’t intended.
Authenticity: Replacing real people with AI avatars in testimonial or brand story formats can backfire.
Ethics and Bias: Outputs may reflect harmful stereotypes baked into training data.
Security: Generative video opens new doors for deepfakes and misuse.
Sustainability: The carbon footprint of AI video is still largely untracked, and growing.
Use It Like You’d Use Stock, Not Like You’d Use a Storyboard
The best early use cases for tools like VEO are low-risk content: replacing stock footage, background visuals, mood pieces, and internal comms. If you need a timelapse of Tokyo, a close-up of a hand slicing steak, or a branded animation loop - this is a smart, cost-effective route.
But if you’re building a flagship campaign, telling human stories, or relying on emotional authenticity, generative video should be handled with care. At this stage, it’s a great tool but not a replacement for real storytelling or human nuance.
Final Thought: AI Video Is a Creative Tool - Not a Creative Strategy
VEO Flow marks a real shift in how brands can create video. But like all tools, its value depends on how it's used. The brands that succeed with AI won’t be the ones who jump on the trend first, they’ll be the ones who invest in training, develop creative standards, and understand the new role of human judgment in the age of machine generation.
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