How are people making these AI videos?

How are people making these AI videos on TikTok?

With an AI video tool or an app template, and each way leaves its own fingerprints. Here's each one in a line, with a trend from the last few months you may have seen:

• Face swap into a real clip. Real footage, with AI changing only who's in it, as in Bulin 47, a street freestyle filmed on 2 Oct 2026.
• Generated from scratch. Nothing in it was filmed: an AI video tool rendered the whole scene, like the three dancing kittens of 28 Jun 2026.
• One photo, animated. A template turns one picture into a brand-new clip, so no two posts match, as with My Ride Is Here, the flying-broom trend from 22 Sep 2026.
• Moves copied onto someone new. A real dance is the reference and the person or animal doing it is rebuilt, as with the Single Ladies dachshund of 4 Oct 2026.
• Live effects and filters. The AI works on the camera while you film, like TikTok's Bold Glamour filter in early 2023.
• Not video at all: photo prompts like the Ghibli-style picture have the biggest AI search peaks we've measured, but they make stills.

The five kinds side by side

What gives each kind away and what it asks of you. Every example is dated; a linked name opens our page on that trend.

Of the examples here, only Hotel Lobby can be made on this site (16 Oct 2026). Lion Friend, Zombie Love Story and Storm II link to our pages about them, which say where each one stands.

1. A face swapped into a real viral clip

This is the classic remake. The viral video is real footage: a music video, a TV sketch, a phone clip from a street. People take the few seconds everyone copies and use AI to put a new face, or a pet, in the lead. Everything else stays: the room, the extras, the camera wobble, the moves and the timing.

Five of the eight trends on this site are this kind from start to finish. Hotel Lobby recasts a COLORS studio performance posted on 17 Jun 2022, and a swap starring two characters from Suits took off on 16 Sep 2026. Alors on Danse recasts a French TV sketch from 2010; its first big AI version, with two fantasy-film characters at the keyboard, went up on 3 Oct 2026 and had about 1.4M plays when we read it on 16 Oct. The source can be years old: the ukulele kitchen clip behind Oouuh was posted in April 2022 and only became an AI trend four years later, in autumn 2026.

Play a version next to its original and everything lines up but the face. The hard part isn't the photo: it's a clean copy of the clip, trimmed and free of captions or watermarks over the faces. That's the part a remake site does once for everyone.

2. A clip generated from scratch

Here nothing was filmed. Someone writes what should happen, sometimes with reference images for the look, and an AI video tool renders it from scratch. These are the clips that seem impossible: three kittens dancing one routine in perfect sync (posted 28 Jun 2026, 107.4M plays when we read it on 16 Oct 2026) or bunnies bouncing on a trampoline, which Lead Stories counted at more than 57 million views in its first day, in July 2025.

The tell is in details that don't hold still. Lead Stories caught the bunnies because one merges into another, so six become five, and the Lion Friend reel because a watch on the woman's wrist is there in one moment and gone in a later one. You only appear in a generated clip if the tool also takes your photo, which is where the next two kinds come in.

Generated clips are also where remake trends can start. Three of the eight trends here began as AI-made clips rather than filmed ones: Rumpelstiltskin is a few seconds of an AI-made fake 1980s fantasy film posted on Instagram on 27 Aug 2026, I Wanna Love You is an AI cat singing by floodlit tennis courts (1 Oct 2026), and Smalltown Boy Cats is two AI cats dancing at a red fence (2 Oct 2026). Both cat clips copy a real person's video posted earlier: a night-selfie routine from a few days before, and a dance posted on Instagram on 4 Aug 2026. So the chain often runs: real video, then an AI copy, then everyone's own version of the AI copy.

3. One photo, turned into a video

This is the photo-to-video kind, one of the main ways people make AI videos of themselves. You give a template one picture, sometimes two, and it generates a fresh clip around you. No viral clip is being copied, only a shared idea, so every post comes out different: another street, another angle, another outfit.

The 2024 AI hug videos worked this way: a photo of two people became a short clip of them hugging, as Detik described it on 24 Aug 2024. So does the Korean baseball trend, where one photo becomes a fan caught on a fake KBO broadcast (self-insert versions from 9 to 10 May 2026), and the zombie love story, built from two photos since 1 Oct 2026. Dance trends get a photo version too: one-photo AI dances followed the real Jawn clip, posted on 16 Jul 2026, from August.

It needs nothing but a clear photo. The trade-off is that you get a take on the idea, never the clip everyone saw. We don't make this kind; our My Ride Is Here page explains why for the broom trend.

4. The moves copied onto someone new

Motion transfer sits between a face swap and a generated clip. The tool takes a real video as the reference for the moves and the camera, plus a photo of the new star, and renders the whole figure again. The timing matches the original, but the body, the clothes and sometimes the whole setting are new.

Take the Single Ladies dachshund, posted on 4 Oct 2026 and past 43M plays when we read it on 16 Oct. It came from one photo of the dog and a reference dance video in a motion-transfer tool, as its owner showed in a how-to two days later. It isn't on this site (16 Oct 2026). Black Cat Clapping (25 Sep 2026) looks fully generated but is a motion copy too: as MakeViral describes the creator's tutorial, he made an AI still of his own black cat with its paws raised, then had a motion-control tool copy a video of himself clapping onto it. Storm II is made the same way, with the film's crowd scene as the reference and a front-facing photo for the lead, and recasts have put a hospital team in scrubs at the front. The Car Jump remakes start from a copy of the reel, a photo and a shared prompt.

It's more work than a template. One Storm II how-to, from the Russian site T—J, lists what goes wrong most: the face in wide shots, repeated faces in the crowd, and moves drifting out of sync.

5. Live effects and filters

Filters are the only kind that works while you film. You open an AI effect in an app, point the camera at yourself, and it changes your face or look in real time. The room and the moves are yours.

TikTok's Bold Glamour is the one people remember: by NPR's account (9 Mar 2023), it redrew the face itself instead of laying an effect over it. Not every AI filter is live, though. Editing apps run them on footage you've already shot: an early AI version of the Hawak Mo Ang Beat dance, posted on 5 Mar 2026, was made with a CapCut AI filter.

People still go looking for them: on 16 Oct 2026 Google suggested "ai filter trend tiktok" and "new ai filter trend".

Photo prompts: the biggest AI trends aren't videos

The AI trends with the biggest search peaks we've measured were pictures. You give a chatbot or an image app a selfie and a prompt and get back a styled still: the Ghibli-style anime look (from 25 Mar 2025), the boxed action figure (peaked 11 Apr 2025) or the 1990s film-heroine saree edit (peaked 14 Sep 2025). Ghibli-style is the largest trend in our search data by a long way.

They also burn out fastest. Across nine photo prompts, search halved a median of 3 days after the peak. If you want one, it's a prompt in an image app, not a video tool. This site doesn't make photo trends: it recasts video clips.

Where app templates fit

A template isn't a sixth kind. It's one of the kinds above, set up by someone else so all you add is a photo. The broom and zombie trends are photo templates. The Single Ladies routine had a CapCut pet-swap template from 29 Sep 2026, days before the dachshund version took off.

Templates arrive quickly: CapCut template posts for the three dancing kittens were up on 30 Jun 2026, two days after the original. They don't always copy what you'd expect. For Fergie Baby, MakeViral's template copies an AI-made version of his walk rather than his own post, and a site named after the trend says its renders copy a stock clip of a woman walking toward the camera (both read 16 Oct 2026). So watch a template's own preview all the way through before you add a photo. For the apps and sites creators name in their posts, see which app makes the AI trend videos.

How long each kind lasts in search

From our dataset of 23 AI trends: Google search for each trend's own name, worldwide, read on 15 Oct 2026. Peak to half and peak to a tenth count days until search stayed below 50% or 10% of the peak for three days running.

Peak sizes are rough estimates on one shared scale. One generated video was still above a tenth of its peak more than 155 days on; the median counts it as the slowest. Two pet remakes on this site were too small in search to time and aren't in the remake row.

Remakes are small in search and big on the feed

A photo prompt's search peak can be fifty times a remake's: Ghibli-style sits at 100 on our scale and Hotel Lobby, the biggest remake we've measured, at about 2. Search isn't views, though. We estimate the versions of Bulin 47 at about 370M views and those of Hotel Lobby at about 137M (both estimates, read 16 Oct 2026), while Bulin 47's search peak was under 2 on the same scale. Pet trends barely register in search at all, yet the AI clip behind Smalltown Boy Cats had about 10.6M plays on its maker's TikTok alone.

Search also peaks early. Across our six 2026 remakes it peaked a median of 4.5 days after the first AI version went up, and the feed often keeps going after that: on 16 Oct 2026 the original Bulin 47 freestyle and the top Rumpelstiltskin remakes were still gaining plays, days after search peaked on 10 and 5 Oct, while the biggest Hotel Lobby and Burning Bridges remakes had barely moved.

How to tell which kind you're watching

Four questions, in this order, sort almost any AI trend video. Labels help when they're there (Instagram marks the account behind the Car Jump reel as an AI-generated profile), but plenty of AI clips carry none.

• Is there an original? Search the song or the caption's credit. Real footage with the same room and moves means a face swap; a motion copy if the body or setting changed.
• Do different versions match shot for shot? Then people are recasting one clip. A fresh scene each time means a one-photo template.
• Could anyone have filmed it? If not, it was generated: watch for things that merge or vanish between frames.
• Is it one take of someone's own room, made in the app? Then it's most likely a live filter.

Four trends to try the remake kind on

Each one is a single fixed clip, cut to the part people copy. Add a photo and see a free preview still within a minute; the video is 100 credits ($9.90) whether it stars one person, two or your pets.

1. Bulin 47↗ Rising ≈380M views · 1 person · 15s The plainest face swap: a real street freestyle filmed on a phone on 2 Oct 2026. Your face goes on the freestyler; the red light, the speaker and the crowd filming him stay. The original was still gaining plays on 16 Oct 2026. See yourself in it
2. Rumpelstiltskin Dance↗ Rising ≈57M views · 1–2 people · 9s Generated first, swapped second: the imp comes from an AI-made film posted on 27 Aug 2026. You play the imp, or bring a friend to play the maiden. See yourself in it
3. I Wanna Love You↗ Rising ≈55M views · 1 pet · 10s For pets: the singing cat is AI-made (1 Oct 2026). One photo of your cat or dog puts it in the mustard suit by the tennis courts, paw in the air. See yourself in it
4. Alors on Danse↗ Rising ≈14M views · 2 people · 18s For two friends, from a 2010 French TV sketch: one of you plays the small keyboard while the other leans right into the lens. See yourself in it

Why this site only makes the first kind

Because a trend is a specific clip. When the orange wall or the red-lit crowd shows up, people know what they're watching, and a recast of that exact clip reads as the trend in the first second. A template render or a prompt-made lookalike gets the idea across, not the clip.

So we find a clean copy of each trend's original once, cut it to the seconds people copy and test it. You add a selfie or a pet photo and get a free preview still within a minute. The full video (100 credits, $9.90, about 5–10 minutes, emailed) takes only your face, hair, facial hair and glasses from the photo and keeps the body, outfit, moves, camera and sound as they are in the clip. Photos are deleted after 30 days and never used for training.

Want a new outfit or setting instead? A motion-copy tool fits better. Seen a clip we don't have? Suggest it with its link.