The "good enough" tier is where most videographers live in 2026, and AI video is about to compress it

Been editing for about 7 years now, mostly corporate work, some indie music video stuff on the side. I use AI tools almost every day now, but mostly for boring things. transcripts rough selects denoise stock matching basic rotoscoping quick concept frames So I'm not in the "AI is useless" camp. It is already useful. But I also don't buy the "AI replaces videographers" panic version of the story. At least not in the clean way people imagine. What I think gets eaten first: generic city B-roll basic product motion cheap corporate explainer visuals simple talking-head filler anything where the client only needs "good enough" That last one is the scary part. The good enough tier is huge. A lot of working editors and videographers live there. What I don't think gets replaced as fast: events weddings docs real interviews news anything where the person physically being there is the entire point No bride is going to accept "we generated the ceremony later." No documentary client wants a fake protest. No CEO wants an AI version of the actual announcement unless the whole point is synthetic. The workflow I'm moving toward is hybrid. Shoot the human parts for real. Use AI around the edges. For my own music video projects, I'll sometimes use DomoAI Animate or Seedance 2.0 to turn an album cover or a still concept frame into a 5-10 second motion test. Not as the final film. More like a moving moodboard. Something to test pacing, color, camera feel, or whether the idea looks stupid before I spend money shooting it. For client work, I'd rather sell the human parts harder: pacing, taste, directing, trust, knowing what not to generate. AI is going to compress the cheap end of the market. I don't see a way around that. But it also makes me think the safest move is not becoming "the AI video person." It's becoming the person who knows where AI belongs in the cut and where it absolutely doesn't. That's the part I'm trying to figure out before the next 5 years hit.