AI Video · Checklist

The AI Slop Banned List

15 things we never let into a founder's video, and what we do instead. AI does the editing. The founder's brand makes the calls.

The problem: AI video has a look now

Glow. Neon. Numbers floating over nothing. Your buyer has seen it a thousand times, and to them it looks like a scam ad. The tools aren't the problem. The defaults are.

So we never start from a blank prompt. Every video starts from the founder's brand file: their colours, fonts and face. Then it runs past a gate whose only job is saying no. This is the list it says no to.

Look

The look buyers read as AI

01
Glow. Soft light around text and cards is the first thing people now read as AI.
Instead: Matte surfaces, hairline borders, and contrast from the brand's own colours.
02
Neon. Electric cyan and magenta on black looks like a crypto ad.
Instead: The founder's palette, with saturation kept in check.
03
Numbers floating over nothing. A stat with no source, chart or screen behind it reads as made up.
Instead: Every number sits on the real thing it came from: the dashboard, the post, the report.
04
Generic fonts and #333 grey. Default fonts and a default grey look like a template, because they are one.
Instead: The founder's fonts and the exact tones from their brand file.

05
A second accent colour. Two accents fighting means nobody made a choice.
Instead: One accent, used only to point at the thing that matters.
06
Stock icons. A rocket for growth or a lightbulb for idea tells the viewer nothing.
Instead: The founder's real screens, real posts and real product.

Motion

Motion that adds time, not meaning

07
Long fly-ins. Things swooping in from off-screen add time and say nothing.
Instead: Elements blur into focus in place, timed to the word that names them.
08
Two ideas in one frame. When a frame says two things, the viewer gets neither.
Instead: One idea per frame. A second line gets its own beat.
09
Red vs green for right and wrong. It reads like a stock-trading ad.
Instead: Right is the brand colour, wrong is muted grey.

Face and voice

The face and voice have to stay theirs

10
AI-edited faces. A face smoothed or reshaped by AI is the fastest way to lose trust.
Instead: One real reference photo. Only the background ever changes.
11
Robot pace. AI voices default fast, and fast sounds like an ad read.
Instead: About 2.5 words a second, the pace a founder actually talks at.
12
Karaoke captions. Bouncing, colour-flashing words look like every faceless channel.
Instead: Clean word-by-word captions in the brand font.

Copy

Words that sound generated

13
Hype words. Game-changer, revolutionary, unlock. Buyers skip them.
Instead: Say what changed, in plain words.
14
Hedging. "This might help you maybe" sounds unsure, or worse, generated.
Instead: Definitive statements. If we can't stand behind it, we cut it.
15
Numbers we can't prove. One made-up stat kills every real one.
Instead: Every number traces back to analytics, and client results are labelled as client results.

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All 15 tells we never let into a founder video, and what we do instead. Free, opens instantly.