Why AI Commercials All Feel the Same: It's the Pacing, Not the Pixels

You can spot most AI commercials in about two seconds. And it's not the hands or the weird artifacts — those are getting fixed fast enough.

It's the pacing. Everything moves at the same speed. Every shot holds for the same amount of time. There's no build, no breathing room, no rhythm to it.

And the thing is, that's not an AI problem. The tools can generate beautiful individual shots. But nobody's directing the space between them. Most people making AI commercials are treating the AI like a camera — point it at something, hit go, use what you get. But a commercial isn't a collection of shots. The order matters. The timing between things matters more than the things themselves.

I spent years cutting promos at NBC and we'd burn hours on a 30-second spot just moving a cut point by a quarter second. A tiny pause before the logo. A half-second hold on someone's expression. You don't notice that stuff when it's right but you absolutely feel it when it's wrong.

AI can give you the shots. What it can't give you is what goes between them. And I think that's going to separate the work that actually performs from the work that just looks good in a portfolio for a while.