Even as AI video models generate decent native audio, most of my delivered work still gets a real sound design pass on top of or instead of that generated audio, and I've noticed sound design for generated footage actually requires a slightly different approach than sound design for footage shot with a real camera on a real set.
Generated footage lacks the accidental audio cues real footage has
Real footage, even without recorded sound, carries implicit audio information in the visible physical world, a door's visible weight suggesting how it should sound closing, a surface's texture suggesting a footstep's character. Generated footage occasionally produces visuals that don't fully commit to consistent physical properties across a clip, which means sound design choices have to be made more deliberately rather than intuited from what the footage itself implies, since the footage sometimes doesn't imply anything consistent to build from.
Layering real recorded elements into generated scenes
My strongest results come from treating generated footage the same way I'd treat a real location with no usable production audio, building a full soundscape from a personal library of recorded ambience and foley rather than relying purely on generated or stock audio. That library, built up over years of real shoots, has become genuinely more valuable for AI-assisted work than I expected when I started collecting it purely for traditional production use.
- Generated footage needs more deliberate sound design, less intuitive inference
- A personal library of real recorded ambience elevates generated scenes noticeably
- Don't assume a model's native audio is good enough without a critical listen
Where native generated audio is actually good enough as is
For quick, low-stakes social content where polish matters less than speed, native generated audio straight out of the model is genuinely fine and I don't touch it further. The extra sound design effort is reserved for anything client-facing at a higher production bar, where the gap between generated-and-untouched and generated-with-real-sound-design-layered-in is obvious the moment you compare them side by side on decent speakers.