When people talk about AI video they usually focus on fear first. Fake videos. Lost jobs. Synthetic actors. Joaquin Cuenca, the CEO and co-founder of Magnific, sees something else entirely. He sees a new camera.

“We are now at the point where we are getting some films that can be produced fully with AI,” Cuenca told me during our conversation for Generated.

That sentence alone would have sounded absurd two years ago.

Magnific, formerly known as Freepik, began life as a massive stock image platform. Designers, marketers, and publishers used it to download icons, illustrations, and photos from professional creators. But in 2023 the company shifted hard into AI image generation. By 2024 it had moved into AI video.

Now the AI side of the business is larger than the original stock media operation.

Cuenca described the transition in very practical terms. People no longer wanted to search endlessly for a close enough image. They wanted to create exactly what they had in mind. “We actually got much bigger traction when people were able to create exactly the images that they needed instead of going to premade images,” he said.

That logic now extends into video.

According to Cuenca, modern AI filmmaking requires far more than typing prompts into a box. Systems need image generation, audio references, clip extension, upscaling, glitch cleanup, color grading, and editing workflows stitched together into a single production pipeline.

The result is something that looks less like a novelty generator and more like a miniature movie studio.

Cuenca pointed to one recent project called Chronicles of Bone, a fantasy series featuring Robin Hood, Dracula, Frankenstein, and Captain Hook occupying the same fictional universe. He said viewers often assume the AI was used only for effects work. “No, it’s the whole thing,” he said.

The economics are what really matter here.

Cuenca claimed that traditional Hollywood productions can cost roughly $50,000 per second of finished footage while AI-assisted productions using Magnific’s workflows can get close to $5 per second. The exact math will vary depending on production quality, but the broader point is hard to ignore. AI drastically lowers the cost of visual storytelling.

That changes who gets to make films in the first place.

One of the more interesting parts of our conversation was that Cuenca does not think AI destroys creative work. He thinks it redistributes it. The repetitive technical jobs may shrink, but he believes storytelling, photography, sound design, and visual direction become more valuable.

“We need somebody that knows about audio. We need somebody that knows about photography. We need somebody with an eye. We need somebody that can tell a story,” he said.

His view is that AI expands production rather than replacing it outright. Smaller studios can suddenly attempt projects that would previously have required massive financing. Mid-sized productions become viable again. Fantasy films, which studios often avoid because of visual effects costs, become far easier to attempt.

There are obvious risks too.

I asked Cuenca about misinformation and synthetic propaganda. Magnific blocks the use of celebrity likenesses and major brands without proof of rights ownership. But he also acknowledged something important. Eventually synthetic video becomes impossible to fully contain.

“We need to exercise a more critical eye over what we see,” he said.

That may be the real social adjustment AI forces on everyone. The internet already trained people to distrust text. AI video trains people to distrust visual evidence itself.

Still, Cuenca remains deeply optimistic about the creative side.

“The number one thing that an artist has to do is remain interesting and interested,” he said.

I liked that line because it cuts through a lot of the panic around tools. Cameras changed filmmaking. Editing software changed filmmaking. CGI changed filmmaking. AI changes filmmaking again. But the underlying requirement remains painfully human. Somebody still needs to have an idea worth sharing.

Cuenca compared AI to photography replacing painting in some contexts. Early photographers were criticized because cameras lacked the flexibility of painters. But photography eventually became its own artistic medium with its own language and strengths.

He thinks AI follows the same path.

“You can dream anything with AI,” he said.

That may be the best way to think about this entire moment. Not as the death of filmmaking, but as the beginning of a very strange new camera.

Transcript

I’m John Biggs from Generated, and this is Joaquin Cuenca. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Magnific. You guys have been around for a long time, and we talked to you before a little while ago, but welcome back, Joaquin.

Joaquín Cuenca (00:26.612)

Thank you, If people don’t remember, I was going to say.

John Biggs (00:28.345)

Yeah. I think it’s been a year or so ago, I think we talked.

Joaquín Cuenca (00:35.08)

Yeah, but last year we were, our name was FreePic. We recently changed our name from FreePic to Magnific.

John Biggs (00:38.318)

Mm-hmm.

John Biggs (00:41.932)

OK, so actually let’s talk about that a little bit. So you guys were always basically like a B-roll slash like photo sharing sort of site where people could get like share upload and sell photos. And then you kind of pivoted over to AI. It sounds like Magnific, it might be fully AI. What is Magnific going to be now?

Joaquín Cuenca (01:04.5)

We originally were like a stock site for images and photos. Pretty popular, like over 100 million visitors. In 2023, we changed. We started creating tools that people could use to create their own images. And in 2024, we created the tools that people could create their own videos. And now that part of the business is much larger than the traditional one.

John Biggs (01:07.214)

Stock site, yeah.

John Biggs (01:32.174)

OK, so tell me about that move. So it used to be stock photos. People would take a picture. You’d upload it. It’s a picture of a tree or whatever. And then people started wanting to have the tools built into the website. And then you kind of almost abandoned the stock photo? Or what’s the situation there?

Joaquín Cuenca (01:51.348)

Well, we didn’t abandon it. The stock images, are still in the platform. It was only professionals that were selling their photos. It was not like end customers that were putting them there. So professionals will sell their catalog through FreePeak. And we had the largest catalog in the world for icons, for illustrations, and stuff like that. But we actually got a much bigger traction when people were able to create exactly the images.

that they needed instead of going to remade images. was, it’s like for them it was just way more useful than before and we got more users because it was more attractive.

John Biggs (02:33.846)

So tell me a little bit about that. First off, did your original customer base say about that? hey, you’re taking away our stock photo, cash, or are they worried about that? What was the situation?

Joaquín Cuenca (02:48.05)

Okay, so first of all, like the users, just got more. They got like their stock images and then they got a way to edit and to create new images from scratch. So for them is a net win. For people that were selling images, they were still selling the same amount of images as before. So this has been purely edited to the platform. So not so much of a backlash. Of course, some people in the industry, they just do not like.

John Biggs (02:50.988)

Mm-hmm.

Joaquín Cuenca (03:16.048)

AI and they are within their right. We have been always very transparent with our approach. We think this is good for the users and this is why we have been doing it.

John Biggs (03:29.568)

So you guys are doing AI video. Specifically, what was the tool set that you had to build out to create good video?

Joaquín Cuenca (03:38.898)

Yeah, so there are multiple things that you need to put together. First of all, you need a way to create audio because audio is going to be used as a reference for the video. You need a pretty good way to generate images in different styles because again, that’s going to be like the seats that you use to generate the video. And then you need to coordinate like typically like multiple video models to generate from scratch, to extend an existing video, to increase the resolution of a video, to clean up.

the glitches on a video. Then some post-processing tools to do color grading on the final outcome to put together like multiple clips that you generate into a full film, et cetera. So there are multiple tools that you need to put together to make something that is really attractive to make long form videos.

John Biggs (04:26.478)

What are people making? Have you been impressed by some stuff that folks have been producing?

Joaquín Cuenca (04:32.454)

Yeah, I mean, of course I’m pretty biased, but there is a production, there is a series playing on YouTube that we produce. It’s called Chronicles of Bone, which shows like multiple fictitious characters. takes Robin Hood, takes Captain Hook, it takes Dracula, it takes Frankenstein. And it puts us in a fantasy world where we kind of live and fight together.

John Biggs (04:56.263)

well.

Joaquín Cuenca (05:02.58)

That one is pretty impressive like most people that watch it their first question is okay you use AJ here, but to do what? Any visual effects is like no, it’s the whole thing Yeah, and they’re pretty surprised by that. So right now If you look at a Hollywood film a Hollywood film It costs around fifty thousand dollars per second to make a second for with our tools all

John Biggs (05:13.571)

whole thing.

Joaquín Cuenca (05:32.016)

all things considered you need to spend around five dollars per second okay so it’s like ten thousands cheaper ten thousand times cheaper

John Biggs (05:45.686)

So what do you say to the folks who have been, I don’t know, they’re used to shooting with cameras, they’re used to sitting there and generating CGI, color grading by hand, all that other stuff. mean, presumably that stuff has kind of changed as well, but what do you say to those folks who are like, hey, this is my world and you guys are just like typing some things and you got Dracula fighting Frankenstein.

Joaquín Cuenca (06:10.45)

Yeah, so they’re going to be our view is that there’s going to be more opportunities for everybody. We don’t have a view that we’re going to lose jobs here. Jobs are going to change. That’s for sure. So if you spend 12 hours a day in front of a computer doing manually some visual effects, that is going to change. But there’s going to be a bigger need of people that know how to put together a story. There’s going to be a bigger need for people that

know about audio, that know about great photography, we see that already happening. We have, for example, we had never been able to put together a film before. It was impossible for a company like us. Now we do it just as a marketing material. This is what you get from a product. We produce a film. To produce a film, we need somebody that knows about audio. We need somebody that knows about photography, because I don’t have any idea about that. We need somebody with an eye. We need somebody that can tell a story.

You put together a small crew to do that. And that enables a project where before you will have zero employees. You have like some medium sized productions, you want a project, this is studio in LA. They are making fully feature films and series with a crew of 300 people. That’s way smaller than a traditional crew, but that green lights projects that will not have been green lighted before because the cost is way more affordable.

Studios, are doing way less fantasy-driven films than what the public wants because it’s just so expensive. So we believe that we are going to see an increase in the number of productions that go out. And that is going to drive the need for more more experts in the industry. Some of the jobs, don’t get me wrong, some of the jobs, they are going to change. They will not stay the same. But people have an eye, people that can tell a story.

My opinion is that they are gonna be in short supply very, very soon. This is gonna be a super exciting industry to be in.

John Biggs (08:12.824)

Mm-hmm.

John Biggs (08:19.342)

How do you prevent disinformation? I mean, your tools could essentially be used to make a whatever, fake Netanyahu or whatever, that kind of thing. How do you prevent that? Are you worried about that?

Joaquín Cuenca (08:29.811)

Yeah.

Joaquín Cuenca (08:33.076)

So we prevent it because we take care, we are very strict into what kind of videos you can generate with the face of a famous person. There are multiple filters that go on when you generate a video. So first filter is, is this a photo of a human? Is this an image of a human? That’s filter number one. If the photo was generated with an AI tool and we know it came from a scratch, that’s okay.

But if it comes from the outside world, we can be representing a real human. Then you can be filtered out. That’s number one. Then is this a famous person? It is a famous person that’s another filter on top of it. And you’re going to get blocked again on the generation. To get unblocked, actually, today is still a manual process that we go through. You need to show us proof of contract with this person so that you want to do it.

John Biggs (09:28.494)

Joaquín Cuenca (09:31.676)

you have the rights to use the person. Same thing with brands, like if you use a brand that is well known, you need to show us the proof of having the copyright to use that IP in general, whatever it is. And that only happens in the enterprise side. On the e-commerce side of things, you don’t have access to those, to being whitelisted. So you will just get blocked. But in general, those tools, they are used to create fantasies.

I think to some extent it’s inevitable that some people will put together things that do not violate any IP, but show things that are fake. can be people that show a building that is being blown out. And in fact, it has not been blown out. And we need to deal with the fact that people play with words, people now play with images and play with videos to tell stories that are not true.

John Biggs (10:18.482)

yeah.

Joaquín Cuenca (10:29.66)

there’s nothing that can be done about it, like this is the reality of current state of technology that we can make those words, images and videos.

John Biggs (10:40.524)

So the view is that this is an extension of a Word document, right? Like anybody can write an article that says somebody did something bad. But this is just the next step in that you can say we’re showing that person doing something bad, but it’s the same as text.

Joaquín Cuenca (10:41.14)

you

John Biggs (11:03.224)

Do you think there is a material difference within a video of somebody doing something bad or a news story that shows up on Facebook, like some fake garbage on news?

Joaquín Cuenca (11:13.716)

We are trying to prevent people showing other persons doing something without their agreement. So we are trying to prevent that so that that doesn’t happen. In general, with the evolution of technology, I think that will become more prevalent. Even if it’s not in our platform, it will happen in other platforms. And we need to get educated around that. I think it’s inevitable. We will need to exercise

John Biggs (11:23.714)

Mm-hmm.

Joaquín Cuenca (11:43.982)

a more critical eye over what we see. The same thing happened even before JNI. Some people do not believe that the man went to the moon, even though they saw the video, because they think that was on stage. That can happen with every single video that you get access to. You see the real representation of reality, see something that was a stage. You need to get more information over the event to understand if this really happened.

John Biggs (11:54.126)

Mm-hmm.

Joaquín Cuenca (12:13.628)

or not. What I’m saying is that your concern is absolutely valid. I think there’s an increase in intravirisks. It was smaller before, and now it’s bigger. And people need to pay more attention to that. But they also think that this technology brings so many good things that it will be allowed. It’s like having knives in your kitchen. has benefits, some downsides, and we need to deal with them.

John Biggs (12:35.118)

Mm-hmm.

John Biggs (12:38.606)

What does the world look like over the next few years? How does AI video change?

Joaquín Cuenca (12:45.622)

Excuse me, can you repeat it again, Cathy?

John Biggs (12:46.862)

How does AI video change over the next few years? Is it getting better? Is it going to be drastically different than it is today even?

Joaquín Cuenca (12:56.094)

Well, we see the evolution from the past three years.

John Biggs (12:58.398)

Mm Yeah, it’s only been like 20, like 2023. It was like it was spaghetti Will Smith. And now you can like make him look like he’s eating spaghetti.

Joaquín Cuenca (13:05.98)

Well, we are now at the point where we are getting like some films that can be produced fully with AI. People are working around the limitations, like the best films that you made today are either with limited characters or with robots where the expression is not that important. We are getting to the point where you can make a film where the expression, where it can be a human and it’s credible, but the acting is not 100 % there.

That’s the current state. I think we’ll be acting very, very accurately there in the near future. I think we’ll close the gap. Whatever gap remains, whatever people find valuable that we’re not yet doing, we’ll do it in the short term. By all intents and purposes, you can consider getting a video today as a new kind of camera that you can use to your profit, to tell your stories.

John Biggs (14:01.408)

I like that idea that this is just another camera, right? It can be a good camera, can be a bad camera. It can be used for almost anything. What should an artist who is entering this world right now, what should they be doing? What should they be learning? Obviously, you don’t need to learn how to shoot anymore. How do you learn how to prompt? How do you learn how to tell stories in this era?

Joaquín Cuenca (14:25.716)

I’m not so sure about that, but you don’t need to learn how to do it. To me, number one thing that an artist has to do is they need to remain interesting and interested. The thing that we bring to the table is our own personalities, our own experiences. You need to have some experiences. So I will advise anybody that wants to do a career in the creative industry.

John Biggs (14:27.715)

Mm-hmm.

John Biggs (14:37.646)

Mm-hmm.

Joaquín Cuenca (14:52.414)

travel around to see different things to gain some experience in the real world. You have to approach this technology like any other technology in the creative industry. It has downsides and you need to learn it. For example, when photography came out, one downside of photography compared to painting is that you cannot change what is in front of the camera. If you’re painting, you can make the person the subject.

a little bit more handsome or whatever you want to do, you have full freedom. If you take a picture, you don’t have that freedom. And people originally criticized photography because it was not as flexible as painting. But it’s its own thing. It’s its own medium. It produces its own form of art. Again, you need to understand what are the limitations and what are the strong points, what you can do with it. is kind of the same. You can dream anything with AI.

John Biggs (15:25.326)

Mm-hmm.

Joaquín Cuenca (15:49.774)

some things will be slightly a little bit more difficult to drive than if you were drawing it by hand or something like that. It’s a limitation of that technology. So just learn to use it. Excuse me one second.

So just learn what are the limitations of the technology. Learn what you can do with it, like the strong points. The strong points is that you can do things that were very difficult to do before that required big budgets. And you can go crazy with that. So experiment a little bit more. Now you can do a film where you transition from reality to illustration to 3D. The same film. There are many, many more things that you can explore. And as an artist, you have to break the rules. You have to go to the limits.

In general, you have to put something that is inside you in front of the others. The others can judge what you produce. So I will advise people to have an angle, to develop that angle, and to look at all the tools that are their disposal. If it’s a camera that’s beautiful, take the camera. If you want to do that, with other people that are acting, that. If you want to use AI to some extent, do it.

I do whatever you want to do to create, to tell your stories, to, you know, that’s it, to put your art.

John Biggs (17:12.75)

Perfect. I’m to send people over to Magnific.com, M-A-G-N-I-F-I-C.com, formally free pick. I like the new site. It looks pretty cool. It’s funny that it started out with you guys just doing stock photos, and now it’s a whole suite, right?

Joaquín Cuenca (17:33.108)

Yeah, the world is changing, and so are we.

John Biggs (17:34.542)

All right, Joaquin, thank you for joining us again. This has been great. We’ll talk to you soon.

Joaquín Cuenca (17:39.39)

Thank you, John.

Thank you.