Guide
How to create an explainer video with AI
'AI explainer video' means three different things depending on which tool you're holding, and picking the wrong category wastes more time than any prompt mistake. Avatar tools (Synthesia, HeyGen) put a synthetic presenter on screen reading your script — built for training and talking-head content. Text-to-video models (Sora-class) hallucinate cinematic footage from a description — stunning, and structurally unable to show your actual product. Website-capture generation (AIDemoVideo) builds the explainer from your real site: your UI is the footage, AI writes and narrates the story. For explaining software, the third category exists precisely because the first two can't show the thing being explained. This guide maps the categories honestly, then walks the website-capture route step by step.
- 1
Pick the right category of AI tool
Decision rule: if the viewer needs to see a person, use an avatar tool. If you need cinematic b-roll of things that don't exist, use text-to-video. If the viewer needs to see your product — which is what a SaaS explainer is for — use website-capture generation. Mixing is legitimate: some teams generate the product walkthrough and top-and-tail it with an avatar intro.
- 2
Nail the explainer arc before generating
Every effective explainer runs the same arc in ~90 seconds: the problem (10s, in the viewer's words), the turn ('here's a better way'), the product proving it (3–4 scenes of real UI), and the close (one CTA). AI drafts this arc for you from your website — your job is recognizing when a draft deviates from it.
- 3
Generate the first draft from your URL
Paste your site, then use the intent prompt to fix the three variables the arc leaves open: audience ('for clinic managers'), emphasis ('lead with the time saved, not the features'), and tone ('plainspoken, no hype'). The AI captures your pages, writes the script, narrates, and renders in one pass.
Shortcut: generate it from your URL
- 4
Judge the script hardest — visuals follow it
In explainers, script failures are fatal and visual failures are cosmetic. Read the generated narration alone, without video: does the problem statement sound like your customer talking? Does every sentence pay rent? Fix the words (edit lines directly or describe changes conversationally), regenerate, then evaluate visuals.
The classic explainer mistake survives AI: describing features when you should be describing relief. 'No more Friday-night spreadsheet cleanup' beats 'automated data normalization'.
- 5
Localize and distribute
Regenerate narration and captions per language for each market — localized explainers stop being separate productions. Ship it to the landing page hero, sales outreach, and paid social; download SRT/VTT captions and the clean video track for platform-specific cuts.
What not to do
- Don't use an avatar tool for a product explainer and wonder why viewers still don't understand the product — they never saw it.
- Don't let text-to-video invent product footage; showing a UI you don't have is a trust debt with compounding interest.
- Don't write the script by committee before generating — generate first, then have the committee react to a draft. It's faster and the fights are smaller.
- Don't run past two minutes; explainer completion rates fall off a cliff, and the second minute is where scripts hide their padding.