Generative video is moving from isolated experimentation into everyday production workflows. In a December 1–5, 2025 survey of 384 U.S. video creators, 71% said they had used AI video generation or editing tools. Among those users, 41% used the tools weekly, while 40% used them occasionally and 19% had tried them only once or twice. The wider creator economy shows a similar pattern: Adobe’s September 2025 survey of more than 16,000 creators across eight countries found that 86% actively used creative generative AI.
Contents
- How widely creators use generative video tools
- Which video tasks use AI most
- Time savings and creator outcomes
- Platform adoption and audience response
- Business demand, trust, and adoption barriers
- Adoption inside media and entertainment
- Why the video market is creating pressure
How widely creators use generative video tools
The 71% adoption figure from Adobe Express measures U.S. video creators who had used AI video generation or editing tools by December 2025. It describes usage, not necessarily regular production dependence. The frequency breakdown shows that weekly use was the largest single group at 41%, but occasional use was close behind at 40%. The remaining 19% had only experimented once or twice. Together, these figures suggest that adoption includes both established workflows and early-stage testing.
The same pattern appears in broader creative-AI research, although the scope is not limited to video. Adobe’s Creators’ Toolkit survey found that 86% of more than 16,000 global creators actively used creative generative AI in September 2025. In that survey, 52% used it to generate new assets such as images and video, and 60% had used more than one creative generative-AI tool during the previous three months. Generative video therefore sits within a larger tool ecosystem rather than operating as a single-purpose category.
Video marketers reported substantial use as well. Wyzowl’s late-2025 survey, reported in 2026, found that 63% of video marketers had used AI video tools to create or edit marketing videos. This result is not directly comparable with Adobe Express’s creator survey because the audiences and question wording differ, but both figures point to usage extending beyond individual hobbyists.
Which video tasks use AI most
Among U.S. video creators who used AI video tools in the December 1–5, 2025 Adobe Express survey, editing was the most common reported use, at 58%. This places AI primarily inside an existing production process rather than only at the initial text-to-video stage. Transitions and effects followed at 42%.
Several supporting tasks each reached more than one-third of users. Thumbnails were reported by 37%, and music selection also by 37%. Voiceovers were used by 36%. A smaller but still meaningful share, 24%, used AI video tools to explore new formats. These uses cover both post-production efficiency and creative experimentation.
Adobe’s global creator research offers a broader view of the same workflow. In September 2025, 55% of surveyed creators used creative generative AI for editing, upscaling, or enhancement, while 48% used it for ideation and brainstorming. Separately, Adobe’s 2025–2026 research, published in 2026, found that 48.6% of U.S. video creators reported substantial generative-AI use for visual effects. The visual-effects figure comes from a different research program and should not be treated as a direct extension of the Adobe Express percentages.
The practical picture is clear: the strongest measured uses cluster around editing, enhancement, effects, and adjacent production tasks. New-format exploration and ideation are also present, but the available figures do not establish that fully generated video is the dominant workflow.
Time savings and creator outcomes
The clearest productivity signal comes from the Adobe Express survey of U.S. video creators. Among creators using AI tools, 56% said AI saved more than 30 minutes per video. A smaller 10% said it removed more than four hours from their workflow. These are reported survey responses, not measured production logs, so they indicate perceived time savings.
Team size was associated with different reported results. Half of U.S. video teams with four or more members said they saved more than two hours per video with AI. The corresponding share was 25% for teams of two or three members and 18% for solo creators.
| U.S. video creator group | Share reporting more than two hours saved per video |
|---|---|
| Teams of four or more | 50% |
| Teams of two or three | 25% |
| Solo creators | 18% |
The comparison describes reported outcomes by team size; it does not prove that team size caused the difference. Larger teams may have more repetitive coordination or editing tasks available for automation, but that explanation is not measured by the supplied research.
Other reported outcomes were related to confidence and consistency. In the same survey, 27% of U.S. video creators said AI tool use increased their confidence in their final content. Another 26% experienced both faster turnaround and better posting consistency after using AI tools. Those figures describe combined creator-reported outcomes, not independently assessed content quality or audience growth.
Platform adoption and audience response
AI video usage varied by the platform where U.S. creators posted. Adobe Express reported the highest platform-level adoption among creators posting on Facebook: 82% said they used AI video tools. The corresponding shares were 75% for Instagram, 75% for TikTok, and 74% for YouTube.
| Platform used by U.S. video creators | Share reporting AI video tool use |
|---|---|
| 82% | |
| 75% | |
| TikTok | 75% |
| YouTube | 74% |
Frequency among users also differed. LinkedIn creators in the U.S. who used AI video tools reported the highest weekly-use rate measured, at 58%. The weekly rate was 30% among TikTok creators who used AI video tools. These percentages concern different platform groups and should not be read as a ranking of total platform adoption.
Audience reaction was less negative than a simple authenticity debate might suggest, at least in the Adobe Express measurement from December 2025. Thirty-one percent of U.S. audiences noticed AI edits in creator videos but did not mind them. Another 23% had not noticed AI edits. Only 2% reacted negatively to AI edits. The survey does not establish whether audiences would respond similarly to fully synthetic presenters, longer generated scenes, or disclosure practices that differ from the measured examples.
Business demand, trust, and adoption barriers
Global creators reported several positive business and creative effects from generative AI. Adobe’s September 2025 Creators’ Toolkit survey found that 76% said creative generative AI accelerated their business or follower-base growth. Eighty-one percent said it helped them create content they otherwise could not have made, and 85% said it had positively affected the creator economy.
These results coexist with substantial trust concerns. Sixty-nine percent of global creators were concerned that their content could be used to train AI without permission. Tool discovery was driven most often by personal research, reported by 58%, followed by social-media trends at 57% and recommendations from other creators at 41%.
Cost and reliability were the leading measured barriers. Thirty-eight percent identified high cost as a barrier to adopting creative generative AI, while 34% identified unreliable output quality. Uncertainty about how an AI model was trained was cited by 28%. The figures show why adoption can grow alongside hesitation: creators may see practical value while still evaluating affordability, consistency, and consent.
For marketers, the broader content-production environment is also expanding. Adobe’s 2025 research of more than 1,600 marketers found that 31% were using generative AI to generate multimedia assets such as images and videos, and 52% were using it in multiple parts of their content-production process. Looking ahead, 84% planned to use generative AI to support content workflows in the following year, while 55% planned to increase usage. These are plans and forecasts from the surveyed marketers, not confirmed future behavior.
Adoption inside media and entertainment
Organizational adoption was substantial but uneven in Adobe’s early-2025 media-and-entertainment research. Thirty-one percent of media-and-entertainment organizations had fully implemented generative-AI solutions, while 28% had fully enabled them. The report also found that 36% of publishers reported fully implemented solutions. These categories come from the report’s organizational framework and should not be combined into a single adoption total.
Video was already part of the evaluation cycle: 57% of media-and-entertainment organizations had adopted generative AI for video or were evaluating it. Among organizations with fully implemented generative AI, 87% forecast improved profitability in 2025. By contrast, media-and-entertainment organizations still in early testing or discouraging use anticipated a 30% profitability decline in 2025. Both figures are forecasts reported in early 2025, not later profitability measurements.
Creative capacity was another expected benefit. Fifty-nine percent of media-and-entertainment senior executives said generative AI was giving creative teams more time for higher-impact strategic work. The underlying report used a base of 3,264 senior executives and practitioners overall and 324 respondents for the broadcast/video-streaming breakdown.
Why the video market is creating pressure
The case for generative video is also shaped by the amount of content organizations need to produce. Adobe’s 2025 demand research found that 96% of more than 1,600 marketers said content demand had at least doubled over the previous two years. Sixty-two percent said demand had increased fivefold or more during that period. Looking ahead, 71% expected content demand to grow more than fivefold between the research date and 2027.
Media formats were part of that pressure. Forty-six percent of marketers said the shift toward formats such as video and audio was driving content demand. Social content was identified as the fastest-growing demand area by 66%, while 54% named short-form video.
Video spending and perceived returns remained strong in Wyzowl’s late-2025 survey of 266 marketers and online consumers. Eighty-two percent of video marketers planned to spend the same or more on video marketing in 2026, and 82% said video marketing had delivered a good return on investment. Ninety-three percent said video had increased user understanding of their product or service.
Taken together, these statistics describe a market with rising volume requirements, broad creator experimentation, and a growing role for AI-assisted editing and production. They do not establish that generative video automatically improves every project. Reported cost, output-quality, training-data, and permission concerns remain central to how creators and organizations assess the technology.