AI Space Video Generator

Flat Vector, the default here, builds every scene from clean shapes in the manner of a science explainer, and ShortFast lists it for science, space and how things work. It suits most space explainers: Jupiter beside Earth, the path of a probe, why one planet's day is long and another's short. It never pretends to be a photograph, so a scene can't pass for a NASA image. A video in it typically costs about 25 credits.

3D Animation draws each scene as a still from an animated film, and ShortFast lists it for kids, fun facts and stories. It's the look for younger viewers: a rover or a helicopter as a friendly character, a tour of the planets with one guide. Describe the character once near the start of the script, since small details can slip between scenes, and keep the cast to machines and invented characters rather than real astronauts. About 25 credits.

Retro Poster renders each scene as a mid-century screen print, and the space race is one of the three things ShortFast lists it for: Sputnik's beeping sphere, the first American satellite, the rockets of the late 1950s, one object per scene. Nobody takes a poster for a photograph, so it can show real machines without passing for archive images. About 25 credits.

Vintage Archive renders each scene as an old black-and-white photograph, for space-age history: a launch crew in 1958, a control room, a crowd looking up. It's the look most easily mistaken for a real archive picture: an AI 'photo' of Explorer 1's launch is a new picture, not a found one. Keep faces out, never present one as a historical photograph, and see the labels below. About 25 credits.

Cinematic draws every scene as a photoreal film still, for the mood of a story rather than its numbers: the night before a launch, a long voyage, a sunset on another world. It's also the look most likely to pass for a real photograph of a real planet or mission, so never present a Cinematic scene as one, and see the labels below. About 25 credits.

Documentary stock footage is the cheapest look, at about 12 credits a video: licensed clips, with nothing to attribute. In a space video it suits the Earth-bound side of the story, such as night skies and observatories. A clip isn't necessarily of the rocket or mission the narrator names, a 'space' clip can be a 3D render rather than a telescope or spacecraft image, and when no clip fits a line the pipeline falls back to an AI image, so check every scene before you post.

Flat Vector, 3D Animation, Retro Poster, Vintage Archive and Cinematic can also turn each image into a short AI video clip. That raises a typical video to about 464 credits, so keep it for a series' strongest episodes; documentary footage doesn't have that option. An animated orbit is an AI clip, not a simulation: check that what moves, moves the right way.

"How big is Jupiter? It's about 11 times wider than Earth: if Earth were a grape, Jupiter would be about as big as a basketball, and as a hollow shell it could hold 1,000 Earths. Yet it spins fastest of all the planets, a day of about 10 hours. Its Great Red Spot is a storm bigger than Earth. Flat Vector look, friendly science narrator, grape and basketball side by side, end on the storm."

"Ingenuity, the little helicopter that went to Mars, as a friendly robot character. It rode there under the Perseverance rover, and on April 19, 2021 made the first powered, controlled flight on another planet, in air less than 1% as dense as Earth's. Planned for no more than five test flights in 30 days, it made 72 over nearly three years. 3D Animation look, cheerful narrator for kids."

"October 4, 1957: Sputnik 1, a metal ball about the size of a beach ball trailing four antennas, circles Earth in just over an hour and a half, beeping. America answers: JPL and the Army ready Explorer 1 and its rocket in 84 days; launched January 31, 1958, it finds the Van Allen belts. October 1, 1958, less than a year after Sputnik: NASA opens. Retro Poster look: rockets, satellites, no faces."

Each fits the 400-character limit of the box above, and every figure in them is on a NASA page you can list in the post text: NASA's Jupiter facts, its Ingenuity mission page and its history pages on Sputnik and Explorer 1. Notice what they leave out: 'according to NASA' never appears in the narration, for the reason in the next section.

Take every distance, size and date from the agency that measured or flew it, NASA, ESA or JPL, on the page you actually read, and note the date you read it. Keep that page's own precision. NASA's Jupiter facts page gives the planet's radius as 69,911 km and calls it 11 times wider than Earth; it gives a day as 9.9 hours in one paragraph and 'every 10 hours' in another. Both are right at their own precision, and 'about 10 hours' is right with both. When you round, say 'about', as the Jupiter prompt does; when the page says 'average' or 'more than', keep the word.

Pages disagree, even on one agency's site. A NASA history article describes Sputnik 1 as a 22-inch sphere of 183 pounds that went around the Earth every 96 minutes; NASA's 'Sputnik, the Dawn of the Space Age' page says about 23 inches, less than 190 pounds and about 98 minutes. Use one page's figure and name that page in the post text, or say only what both support: 'just over an hour and a half' is true by either count. Dates have time zones, too. NASA's history pages give Explorer 1's launch as 10:48 p.m. EST on 31 January 1958, which was already 1 February in UTC, so a source that dates by UTC can give a different day. Use the agency's date, and say whose clock when it matters.

Every AI image of a planet, moon or spacecraft is an artist's impression, not a photograph. It can look right at a glance and get the details wrong: the pattern of a planet's bands, the number of a rover's wheels, the shape of a helicopter's rotors. Use AI scenes to explain, or to show what no camera has seen, and never caption one as a NASA image.

For the real thing, upload a real image into the scene. NASA's media usage guidelines say its images, audio and video 'generally are not subject to copyright in the United States', that NASA content 'used in a factual manner that does not imply endorsement may be used without needing explicit permission', and that 'NASA should be acknowledged as the source of the material', so credit NASA in the post text. Some images on NASA's sites belong to third parties: NASA marks them with the copyright holder's name, and its use of them 'does not convey any rights to others to use the same material', so read the credit line before you upload. And if an image shows an identifiable person, such as an astronaut, NASA warns that using it for commercial purposes 'may infringe that person's right of privacy or publicity'.

The same guidelines have a section on AI, and three lines in it matter here. NASA 'does not permit' its insignia, the 'meatball', the 'worm' logotype or the seal, 'to appear with AI generated imagery', so swap any AI scene that draws something like a NASA logo, and don't upload a NASA photo with its logo on a rocket or a suit into a video that has AI scenes. NASA 'strongly encourages AI-generated products maintain a marking indicating the product is AI generated', one more reason to turn on the labels below. And it says 'references like "according to NASA" or similar are prohibited in AI products'. That section is written for AI tools built on NASA's data, but the safe reading for an AI-narrated video is the same: keep 'according to NASA' out of the narration, and list the pages you checked in the post text.

YouTube requires creators to disclose AI-generated or altered content that seems realistic, including content that 'alters footage of a real event or place' or 'generates a realistic scene that didn't actually occur'. In a space video, that's a photoreal image of a real planet, spacecraft or mission that could be taken for a photograph: a Cinematic still of a rover on Mars, a Vintage Archive 'photo' of a 1958 launch, or a realistic scene in AI Images, one of the looks in the box above. You answer Yes under 'AI use' when you upload; for videos ShortFast posts for you, the setting is in YouTube Studio. Content that isn't realistic needs no disclosure, and one of YouTube's own examples is 'an AI-generated or altered animation of a missile in a fully animated video'; using AI for the script or the captions needs none either. Flat Vector, 3D Animation and Retro Poster scenes are plainly not photographs. YouTube says: 'Disclosing AI content alone won't limit a video's audience or impact its eligibility to earn money.'

TikTok requires a label on AI-generated content containing realistic images, audio or video, while artistic styles and generic text-to-speech narration don't need one. These videos are made with AI from script to voice, and TikTok encourages labeling AI-generated content and says the setting won't affect distribution, so turning it on costs nothing. Even with a label, TikTok doesn't allow AI content that fakes an authoritative source or a crisis event, so an AI 'NASA alert' about an asteroid on course for Earth is out, label or not.

Labels and monetisation are separate questions, and the one a daily space channel meets is repetition. YouTube's spam policy doesn't allow 'using automated tools or AI to churn out high volumes of similar content with minimal changes', though 'posting a few variations of a video is ok', and its example is 'channels that use the exact same background music and repetitive AI generated imagery across many videos, with each video reading out an AI-generated script'. Its monetisation policies add that generic or repetitive content 'includes content that looks like it's made with a template', and that 'channels where content feels interchangeable from video to video are not allowed to monetize'. A planet-a-day series that swaps the planet's name into the same script over the same glowing AI planet is that case. What YouTube lists as allowed is 'content that utilizes creative tools to assist in delivering a unique, well-researched, or creative narrative', and well-researched is the part a sourced space video already has.

NASA's images being generally free of US copyright doesn't make a channel built on them monetisable. YouTube's reused-content policy covers channels that repurpose content 'without adding significant original commentary, substantive modifications, or educational or entertainment value', and it 'applies even if you have permission from the original creator'. Use real images to show what your script explains, not as the video itself.

If you make space videos for children, in 3D Animation for example, set your channel's audience in YouTube Studio: ShortFast doesn't set one on the videos it posts, so the channel's setting applies. YouTube judges the monetisation of 'made for kids' content by its quality principles for kids and family content, and one of the low-quality principles it enforces is 'deceptively educational' content that promises to teach something but shows 'incorrect or unhelpful information'. A wrong number in a kids' space video is that, and a video found to break these principles may see limited or no ad earnings.

Don't count on real mission images. The documentary look draws on licensed stock footage, so a clip isn't necessarily of the rocket or spacecraft named, a 'space' clip can be a 3D render, and when no clip fits a line the pipeline falls back to an AI image. To be sure a scene shows the real thing, find the image on NASA's site, read its credit line and upload it into the scene, under the guidelines above.

AI images aren't drawn to scale. Ask for Jupiter beside Earth and you get two spheres the model thinks look right, not a measured 11 to 1, and no scene can show the distances between planets to scale. Put the numbers in the narration, which the captions show word by word, check every scale scene, and if one matters, upload a diagram you made or have the rights to use.

It doesn't check facts, and the narration is fixed once rendered. ShortFast writes a fluent script, and a fluent draft can repeat a figure that's out of date or rounded the wrong way. You can swap scenes, edit captions, change music, title and post text, and re-render, but a wrong number in the narration means generating again.

An automation has no approval step. In a space series the AI picks each new planet, mission or question and writes its script, and every episode posts automatically or arrives by email, so choose email delivery and check each episode's figures and scenes before you post it. The next two episodes are queued: you can edit their captions, scenes and post text, re-time, pin or delete them, but not change their script. The series brief, up to 500 characters, is where your rules go: one object or mission per episode, 'about' on anything rounded, no NASA logos, no 'according to NASA'.

None of these channels use ShortFast; they show what space audiences come back for. Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell, 'a team of illustrators, animators, number crunchers and one dog', explains science in flat, brightly coloured animation and keeps returning to space, in titles such as 'Why Humanity Will Never Leave The Solar System' and 'This Is the Scariest Place in The Universe'. Astrum asks 'How big is the Solar System? What actually orbits our Sun?' and promises a series on each planet with 'images and videos captured by probes and spacecraft', in titles such as 'Why Is the Closest Planet to the Sun So Cold?' and 'You Can't Land on Saturn's Moon Hyperion'. History of the Universe takes on scale in titles such as 'How Big Is Everything?' and 'What Is The Universe Expanding Into?'. The Vintage Space covers 'mid-century history, mostly about science and technology', much of it the space age, as in 'Apollo 8's Christmas Miracle' and 'Insane Alternate Lunar Rovers from the 1960s'.

What they share is one question or one story per video, a narrator who answers it, and numbers or history that hold up. That is the part to copy; the scenes, the voice and the captions are the part ShortFast handles.