A working AI pipeline for short-form video in 2026
Script, voice, b-roll, captions and publishing — what each step actually costs.
A solid 2026 pipeline starts with a script model tuned for the platform — TikTok scripts don't read like YouTube scripts. Generate three variants, pick one, edit by hand. The hand-edit step is non-negotiable; pure AI scripts under-perform pure human ones by a wide margin.
Voice: cloned voice with explicit consent if the channel has a persona, off-the-shelf otherwise. B-roll: a mix of stock and generated clips, with cuts every 2-4 seconds. Captions: word-level timestamps, burned in. Skip auto-captions; they ruin retention.
End-to-end cost per finished minute in 2026 lands between $4 and $25 depending on quality. The bottleneck is editing taste, not compute. Hire a human editor before you upgrade your models.