Producing quality and compelling videos for social media marketing used to be placed firmly in the hands of talented videographers. These days, almost anyone with a computer or mobile phone can edit an attention-grabbing video that looks professional and well-produced, all because of AI-powered editing tools.

Here are seven apps and tools you can use to edit, and even fully generate, short, compelling videos suitable for social media.

Adobe Premiere Pro - If you’re looking to edit high-quality videos, Premiere Pro is considered an industry standard, a robust professional video editing software that is part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud. While the desktop version is fee-based and has a fairly steep learning curve, the mobile version for iOS and Android is free and offers rapid editing, auto-captioning, and other basic features.

CapCut - This free video editing app was developed by ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, and can be easily integrated with TikTok as well as Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The app can automate transitions, apply effects, and generate captions.

Canva - While their AI video creation tool is relatively new and more reliant on templates than video generation, Canva has a suite of basic video editing tools that are easy to use, particularly for beginners. If you already have video clips that you’d like to combine, Canva can feel less daunting than some of the more sophisticated editing tools while still producing quality videos for social media.

HeyGen - If you are looking to create realistic videos that use AI-powered avatars, HeyGen is the app for you. You can turn scripts into videos that incorporate text-to-speech, generating voices for the avatars in over 170 different languages. The company says using the app is especially useful for creating explainer videos, product demos, and educational content.

Sora - Developed by OpenAI, Sora creates hyper realistic-looking, high-definition videos up to 60 seconds long using text prompts. The app also is known for the 3D scenes it can create as well as its adherence to real-world physics, such as properly placing shadows and reflections, details that other AI-video generation tools might miss.

Veed - This browser-based tool can be used to edit and create videos and claims to replace professional video editing tools. You can add subtitles, reduce noise, trim, and perform other common editing functions. You can also generate videos from text prompts or reference images.

Veo 3.1 from Gemini - This is a Google product that claims to support multiple reference images that let you direct your video and the characters and objects within it.

Using AI-powered video editing and creation tools can save you time and money and help make up for videography skills you may not have. On the editing side, the AI tools can handle many of the tasks that can improve a video’s quality such as color correction, audio enhancements, special effects, and animation.

AI-produced videos, however, can be problematic. As with AI-generated text, the tools can produce errors such as oddly shaped people or warped objects. While you could produce a video of a cheering crowd quickly, you should spend time going through the video to make sure the "people" pictured don’t have extra fingers or are missing an eye.

There are also some ethical concerns, in general, about generating AI videos including the creation of deepfakes and the risk of distributing misinformation. Because of these types of violations, many people are wary of the videos they see online, unsure if they are real. Over-relying on AI generated videos can create a lack of trust with your audience. Some companies are adding a note when they are posting an image or video they’ve generated through AI for full transparency.

Choose an AI video editing tool to use based on features, budget, reviews, and output. If you are currently using a video editing tool, check to see if and how they are incorporating AI into their features and try those out first before adopting - and paying for - additional software.