AI Video Tools Are Profitable Now—Lessons for SG Brands

AI-generated video used to be easy to spot. Extra fingers. Weird eye contact. Movements that looked like a puppet on invisible strings. That “AI look” hasn’t completely disappeared, but the bigger shift is more important: AI video is becoming a real business, not just a demo.

A recent example out of China makes the point clearly. Kuaishou (the company behind a major short-video platform and long-time rival to ByteDance’s Douyin) has pushed its AI video product, Kling, into paying territory. According to reporting cited in CNA, Kling hit an annualised revenue run rate of about US$240 million (Dec 2025), and its monthly active users jumped 110% from 3 million in December to 7.7 million in January. Paying users reportedly surged 350% month-on-month in January.

For Singapore businesses following this AI Business Tools Singapore series, here’s why it matters: monetisation is showing up at the product layer—in tools that make marketers faster, campaigns cheaper, and content more scalable. Not in yet another “bigger model.” If you’re trying to generate leads in 2026, AI video tools aren’t a novelty. They’re a budget line.

The real trend: AI video is moving from “cool” to “paid”

Answer first: AI video tools are earning money because they solve a painful problem—producing consistent video content at speed—better than most teams can do manually.

In China, the market is brutally competitive and consumer attention is fickle. That’s exactly why the Kling numbers are so telling. People don’t pay for “AI.” They pay for outcomes: content that’s good enough to publish, iterate, and use to sell.

What changed in the last year isn’t just video quality. It’s the packaging:

• Product focus beats model hype. Kling didn’t win mindshare by becoming a general-purpose chatbot. It went after one job: make short, believable videos quickly.
• Distribution matters. Kuaishou has a built-in ecosystem of creators, advertisers, and visual data—so it can test, learn, and ship improvements quickly.
• Business buyers are anchoring revenue. Kuaishou has said professional and enterprise clients account for around 70% of Kling revenue (as cited in CNA).

That last point is the one Singapore SMEs should pay attention to. When enterprise use dominates, you’re not looking at a toy. You’re looking at a tool category forming.

What Singapore companies can copy (and what they shouldn’t)

Answer first: The playbook is simple: pick one monetisable workflow, use AI to compress time and cost, and build repeatable distribution.

Many Singapore teams approach AI video backwards. They start with the tool (“Which generator should we use?”), generate random clips, then wonder why nothing converts.

Kling’s rise points to a better approach.

1) Start with a revenue workflow, not a creative experiment

If you’re a Singapore business trying to drive leads, your AI video workflow should map to one of these:

• Performance ads (Meta/TikTok/YouTube Shorts): rapid variant testing
• Product explainers: short demos for landing pages and WhatsApp sharing
• Sales enablement: personalised clips for outbound and proposals
• Customer education: onboarding videos that reduce support tickets

Pick one. Tie it to a metric you already track (CPL, CVR, CAC, demo bookings). Then deploy AI video as a production system, not “content.”

2) Optimise for “dangerously good enough”

One line from the source article sticks: the output is “good enough.” That’s why regulators worry—and why marketers get excited.

For business use, “good enough” means:

• Clear message in the first 1–2 seconds
• Clean visual continuity (no distracting glitches)
• Brand-safe imagery and voice
• Mobile-first framing (subject centered, readable composition)

Polish still matters, but not everywhere. Your hero brand film? Keep it traditional. Your 30 variations of a retargeting hook? AI video shines.

3) Don’t confuse virality with a moat

The article notes a tough truth: novelty is cheap. A viral feature (like Kling’s “motion control”) can spike usage, but it doesn’t guarantee durable growth.

For Singapore businesses, the moat isn’t the tool. It’s:

• Your customer understanding
• Your creative testing discipline
• Your distribution (audience + retargeting + email/WhatsApp lists)
• Your first-party assets (product footage, testimonials, UGC permissions)

AI video accelerates what you already do well. It doesn’t replace fundamentals.

Practical AI video use cases for lead generation in Singapore

Answer first: The fastest ROI comes from ad iteration, localisation, and sales personalisation—because these are repetitive, expensive, and measurable.

Below are patterns I’ve seen work, especially for SMEs and mid-market teams.

1) “20 hooks in a day” for paid social

Instead of spending weeks to produce one “perfect” ad, run a hook sprint:

1. Write 20 hooks (problem statements, contrarian takes, quick demos)
2. Generate simple AI video variations (same offer, different hooks)
3. Launch with low budgets to identify winners
4. Recreate top performers with improved assets (or keep iterating)

This mirrors what performance teams already do with static creatives—just moved into short video.

2) Localisation that actually looks local

Singapore brands often sell across SEA (and increasingly to Australia, the UK, or the US). AI video can help you localise:

• On-screen environments (office vs café vs warehouse)
• Voiceovers and subtitles
• Cultural references (cautiously—avoid stereotypes)

The goal isn’t to pretend you’re a local company everywhere. It’s to make content feel less generic while keeping your brand consistent.

3) Sales teams using personalised video at scale

A simple B2B use case: generate a short intro clip that includes:

• The prospect’s industry context
• A relevant outcome (e.g., “reduce no-shows” or “improve conversion rate”)
• A quick demo snippet of your product

Even if you keep the spokesperson real (recommended for trust), AI can generate supporting visuals, b-roll, and scene variations quickly.

4) Seasonal campaigns (timely for Feb–Mar 2026)

It’s early 2026. Many Singapore teams are planning:

• Post-Lunar New Year retention pushes
• Q2 pipeline campaigns
• Mid-year sale prep (especially e-commerce)

AI video is most useful when you need speed: turning an insight into publishable creatives within days, not weeks.

The cost reality: AI video isn’t “cheap,” it’s “more efficient”

Answer first: AI video reduces production bottlenecks, but compute and iteration still cost money—so you need guardrails.

The source article highlights that deploying AI products (inference) isn’t cheap, and Kuaishou even sold bonds to bolster AI funding. For businesses, the translation is straightforward: your costs shift.

Instead of paying mostly for filming and editing, you pay for:

• Tool subscriptions and usage credits
• Staff time for prompting, selection, and QA
• Compliance checks (copyright, approvals)
• Versioning and asset management

The win is that each additional variant costs far less than traditional production.

A good internal rule:

• If you can’t tie a video to a funnel step and metric, don’t generate it.

Governance: deepfakes, copyright, and brand risk (don’t wait for regulators)

Answer first: If your AI video workflow doesn’t include consent, IP checks, and disclosure rules, you’re building a future crisis.

The CNA piece points out obvious misuse cases: realistic deepfakes, turning real people into videos quickly, and remixing famous IP. That’s not just “internet drama.” For companies, it’s reputational and legal exposure.

Here’s a practical checklist for Singapore businesses using AI video tools for marketing:

A simple AI video governance checklist

1. Consent rules: Never generate a person’s likeness (staff, customers, influencers) without written permission.
2. IP guardrails: No “make it like Disney/Studio Ghibli/Barbie/Pikachu” prompts for commercial work.
3. Brand safety review: One owner signs off on every paid campaign creative.
4. Disclosure policy: Decide when you’ll label AI-generated content (especially for testimonials, spokesperson-style videos, or sensitive categories).
5. Asset provenance: Store source prompts, versions, and original inputs in a shared folder.
6. Platform compliance: Keep up with ad platform rules on synthetic media.

This matters because the better AI video gets, the less forgiving people become when it’s misused.

A useful internal mantra: “If it would feel creepy in real life, it’s risky in an ad.”

How to choose AI video tools (without chasing rankings)

Answer first: Choose based on your workflow: controllability, speed, output consistency, and commercial usage rights.

The source mentions video “quality” rankings (e.g., Artificial Analysis). Rankings are interesting, but businesses should prioritise operational fit.

When evaluating AI video generators for marketing and customer engagement, ask:

• Control: Can you control motion, camera, and character consistency?
• Consistency: Can you reproduce a style across 30–100 variations?
• Speed: How long from idea to export?
• Rights: Are commercial rights clear for your use case?
• Team workflow: Can multiple people collaborate, review, and version?
• Safety: Does the tool offer safeguards against obvious misuse?

If a tool is “amazing” but your team can’t produce repeatable results in a week, it’s not the right choice.

Where this is heading for Singapore: AI video becomes the default for iteration

AI video used to be a party trick. Now it’s increasingly the engine behind the boring-but-profitable work: ad variants, localisation, product explainers, onboarding clips.

China’s AI video monetisation is a validation signal. People pay when AI removes friction from real workflows. And for Singapore businesses—where talent is expensive and speed matters—AI video is becoming the default way to iterate.

If you’re building your stack of AI business tools in Singapore this year, treat AI video like you treat analytics: a capability you operationalise, not a feature you play with.

The next question isn’t “Can we generate video?” It’s: Can we generate the right videos safely, consistently, and tied to revenue?

Source reference (landing page): https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/china-ai-videos-kuaishou-bytedance-profit-5906516