How To Make VIRAL AI Generated Story Shorts (For Free!)

Introduction

In recent months, a new trend has emerged on YouTube: AI-generated animated story shorts that convey morals and lessons. Some channels have exploded in popularity, accumulating millions of views and hundreds of thousands of subscribers in just a few months. Intrigued by this phenomenon, I delved deeper into how these channels operate and discovered that creating similar content is not only possible but also remarkably simple and cost-effective. In this article, I will guide you through the steps needed to make your own faceless AI-generated story shorts.

Understanding the Format

These viral videos generally consist of several essential elements:

A Compelling Story: The backbone of the video, typically featuring a moral lesson.
AI Voiceover: A voice generated by AI that narrates the story.
AI-Generated Images: Visual elements that complement the narrative.
Background Music: Music to enhance the viewing experience.
Captions: Text on-screen that reinforces the story.

Step 1: Crafting Your Story

The first step in creating your animated short is developing a good story. Here are two effective methods to gather story ideas:

Browse Pinterest: Search for keywords like "short stories with morals." This will yield a range of stories and moral lessons to inspire your script.
Use ChatGPT: You can use a specific prompt that composes high-quality scripts, complete with narratives and moral conclusions. Simply copy the provided prompt into ChatGPT to create a tailored script.

Step 2: Generating Visuals

After drafting your script, the next task is to gather images that match your story. For this, I recommend:

Leonardo AI: This AI image generator has a free plan providing 150 credits daily. Use its "3D Animation Style Model" to create images appropriate for your story.

To save time, I created a powerful prompt for ChatGPT that auto-generates detailed prompts for the images needed. You can copy that prompt, paste your script at the end, and generate all required image prompts in seconds.

Step 3: Animating the Images

Once you have your images ready, you can animate them using Leonardo AI:

Select an image and use the "Image to Motion" feature to add subtle movements. Adjust the motion strength to 1 or 2 for the best results.

Step 4: Adding AI Voiceover

For the voiceover, I recommend using Eleven Labs. It offers high-quality AI voices and includes a free plan for generating up to 10 minutes of audio monthly:

Choose and generate a voice that matches your video content—a middle-aged male voice often works best for these types of stories.
Paste your script into the software and generate the voiceover.

Step 5: Editing Your Video

Now it's time to combine all the elements using video editing software. I suggest using CapCut, primarily due to its user-friendly interface and free accessibility.

Editing Steps:

Upload all your images, video clips, and voiceovers.
Arrange your voiceover clips onto the timeline, trimming any silences.
Change the aspect ratio to 9:16 for optimal viewing on short form platforms.
Sequence the images according to the voiceover, resizing them to fit the screen.
Add zoom-in effects to enhance engagement by using keyframes.
Incorporate transitions and background music. For royalty-free music, check Epidemic Sound or YouTube's Audio Library.

Finalizing Your Video:

Add captions using the auto-caption feature in CapCut. Adjust these captions to improve readability—shorter text portions generally perform better. Don’t forget to customize the style to make it visually appealing.

When you're done, render your video and you’ll have a polished AI-generated story short ready for upload!

Conclusion

Creating viral story shorts doesn’t need to be complicated or costly. With the right tools—AI for storytelling, visuals, and voiceover—it can be a straightforward and rewarding process. I invite you to try out these methods for yourself and explore the world of faceless YouTube content creation!

Keyword

AI-generated shorts, viral videos, animated story, moral lessons, voiceover, Leonardo AI, Eleven Labs, CapCut, YouTube content, video editing.

FAQ

Q1: How do I create a story for my AI-generated video?
A1: You can use Pinterest for inspiration or generate a script using ChatGPT.

Q2: Which software should I use for generating images?
A2: Leonardo AI is a recommended tool that offers a free plan for generating images.

Q3: How can I add a voiceover to my video?
A3: Eleven Labs provides a free plan for high-quality AI voice generation.

Q4: Is there free software for video editing?
A4: Yes, CapCut is a free and user-friendly video editing software suitable for creating short videos.

Q5: How can I find background music for my videos?
A5: You can use Epidemic Sound for royalty-free music or YouTube's Audio Library for free songs.