I really wasn't looking to pick up a new tool, and when I first saw Genius.AI, it was initially a pass for me. I had recently picked up Mavic, and this tool seemed to be pretty comparable, so I held my ground and passed. Until I learned about the founder Peter Kell. He is good at what he does and while there may be a learning curve going from VSL creation to building a sustainable software, I get the feeling that Peter isn't going to let this tool fail. Initially, there were some negative interactions with the AS community because some of the features were not included in the deal and gated. Since then, it appears that the Genius.AI team has opened up some features, making it more palatable. A responsive team is always a good sign.
I want to turn to the tool itself. I've been playing with it for a few years, and immediately there are things I like, and things I don't like. Let's start with the dislikes: the dashboard is all over the place, really detracting from the user experience. The sidebar is filled with menu options that it's unclear where to start. There's an Assistant tab, which opens a sub-menu. Underneath that, Trends & Ideas, under that Media Creation. If I log in and want to create content, which of those am I choosing and why? The saving grace is that also on your dashboard are content ideas that you can click on and let Genius.ai start creating content. This is the "Social/Organic" dashboard. If I want to create a VSL, you have to click a link which takes you to a second sidebar? I feel like the tool is trying to packed with features, but the UX really needs work. (I had a similar criticism in my review of Mavic. When you log in, there are all these buttons which all take you to the same place - maybe.)
Another UX frustration is that you can't create content from the calendar. You have to create your content elsewhere, and then remember when/where you want to save it. It'd be great to work in the other direction - I can see my calendar, click on a date, have an option to create content, and then drill down to what I want to create.
I can go one with criticisms, but right now, it's mostly about the UX.
On to some of the good stuff. I love that it has ideas waiting for you as soon as you log in. Bam - 6 content ideas, pick one or more and run with them. When you select an idea, it creates a post that you can edit and modify for different platforms, choose to record yourself with a teleprompter, or create an AI short reel.
One of the main reasons I wanted to give Genius.ai a shot is because of the VSL script writing - which I haven't gotten around to just yet. I have to watch the tutorials to understand how to use the VSL part. It appears that the VSL scripts are based off of Peter's VSL Bible.
One aspect of this tool that I didn't see get much attention (and I'm not sure why) is the ability to auto-respond to message on social. You're probably familiar with the play - comment "WORD" below and I'll send you the goodie. This is awesome that it's included in here, and then you can carry those conversations within the platform. It looks like it's only for FB and IG at the moment, would be incredible if that tool expanded to LinkedIn, X, and/or TikTok.
This tool reminds me of Mavic in many ways. It really is a dashboard built on top of custom prompts (which is fine). Mavic let's you have multiple brands, add competitors (though not sure it does anything with competitor info), and let's you create multiple ICPs (which is the one feature I love most about Mavic). Genius.ai, on the other hand, is limited to one business (when you take the questionnaire, you can choose personal brand or business. Even assuming you can do one of each, it doesn't look like you can add more, though you can add multiple products, which I assume inherits the voice from the questionnaire). In addition to creating social media posts, you can create those AI shorts (fyi, pictures that pan and scroll stitched together with captions - it's not a video with actual character motion). Finally, the commenting on feeds is a really great inclusion. If Genius.ai and Mavic married each other, it could be the perfect content creation tool for all creators. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. I'm still going to play around with Genius, because my real hope was that it would help speed up my video creation process. I would definitely recommend picking it up and giving it a test spin because, while it has it's bugs, there's something about this tool that feels really powerful under the hood, and once the team is able to improve the packaging, I think this could be a powerhouse.