Creating AI Videos with HailuoAI: Our Experience with Text-to-Video and Image-to-Video

HailuoAI is promoted as the most efficient video generation tool, particularly excelling at handling complex physical interactions. It’s developed by the Chinese company Minimax, which also offers a chatbot, an AI agent, an audio tool, and the avatar generator “Talkie.”

Every new user starts with 500 credits in the free version. To give you an idea: creating a 6-second video at 768px resolution costs 25 credits – enough for about 20 videos before you need to upgrade to a paid plan.

If that’s not sufficient, you can switch to the Pro version, which offers:

• 1080px resolution
• Clips up to 10 seconds long
• No watermark
• Priority processing, significantly reducing wait times

Pricing starts at $9.99 per month and goes up to $124.99, depending on the number of credits required.

Dynamic, physically demanding motions like those in sports are a major challenge for many AI video tools. HailuoAI claims to perform especially well in this domain. To compare, we gave the same task to Sora by OpenAI: generate a video showing a basketball player dunking the ball through the hoop – a highly dynamic and technically demanding scene.

First, we generated prompts using ChatGPT for Sora and Minimax Chat for HailuoAI. Why? Because not every AI video tool handles the same prompt equally well. Some tools interpret directions perfectly, while others misread them and produce suboptimal results. In our experience, the best prompts come from tools made by the same developer as the video generator.

For ChatGPT this prompt was used: Create a prompt for Sora for me. I want to get a video of a male basketball player dunking the basketball through the rim. Max. 2000 characters.

ChatGPT generated this prompt for Sora: A cinematic slow-motion shot of a young athletic male basketball player dunking a basketball through the hoop. He wears a modern, stylish basketball uniform in bold colors, set in a professional indoor arena with dramatic lighting. The camera follows him from the explosive jump to the powerful slam dunk, capturing his focus, muscle tension, and motion blur. Realistic movement physics, sweat details, and a cheering crowd in the background enhance the intensity. The scene ends with him hanging on the rim as the crowd roars.

For the Minimax Chat we use the equivalent prompt: Create a prompt for HailuoAI for me. I want to get a video of a male basketball player dunking the basketball through the rim. Max. 2000 characters.

Minimax Chat produced a slightly more structured output with Key Details and Mood: Create a high-energy sports video of a professional basketball player executing a powerful dunk. The scene is set on a modern indoor basketball court with bright LED lighting and a roaring crowd blurred in the background (out of frame). Key Details: A male athlete in a red/white team uniform (tank top, shorts, high-top sneakers) jumps from the free-throw line, muscles tensed, ball gripped tightly in one hand. Slow-motion capture of the ball spinning as the player’s arm extends upward, slamming the ball through the hoop with a visible ripple effect on the net. Mood: Adrenaline-pumping, cinematic, and larger-than-life.

The Sora result is disappointing: the player jumps up and down a few times, but the ball never reaches the hoop. The basket setup in the foreground looks very unrealistic.

In contrast, the HailuoAI video delivers: the dunk is physically accurate, and most of the prompt’s instructions are followed. The only oddity is the initial jump, which resembles someone bouncing off a trampoline.

As a 3-second clip, the dunk appears even more natural.

The result is borderline frightening – even small details like the girl’s braids flapping as she runs are rendered realistically. Only downside: at the end of the video, one child mysteriously vanishes. But this can easily be fixed by trimming the final half-second.