Stock footage is not dead and generated b-roll has not replaced it. The two have split along a clean line: stock wins whenever the shot must contain a real person, a real recognisable place, or legal certainty you can hand to a client. Generation wins whenever the shot is specific to your brief, because stock's fundamental limitation was never quality, it was that somebody else decided what to shoot.
Where stock still wins
Real people, especially faces. A stock clip has a released model. A generated person has none, and in advertising that distinction carries weight.
Real places. A recognisable skyline, a specific landmark, a real street. Generation approximates and the approximation is noticeable to anyone who knows the place.
Legal certainty. A stock licence is a document you can put in a file and show a client's legal team. Generation gives you model terms and a platform's commercial-use position, which is a different and newer kind of assurance. See can you use AI video commercially.
Archival and documentary material. Historical footage cannot be generated, and generating something that looks archival is a category error rather than a shortcut.
When you need it in ninety seconds. Search, download, drop in. Faster than any generation.
Where generation wins
The shot that does not exist. The reason this category took share. Your product, in your treatment, in a setting nobody filmed.
Iteration. Twelve variations of one idea, which stock cannot do at all.
Consistency across a set. Stock clips from different shoots never quite match; a generated set from one reference can.
Not looking like everyone else. The stock tell is real: the same clips circulate across competing brands in a category.
Cost at volume. Per-clip prices on 8frame, a credit being $0.01 at pack rate: 24 credits for 5 seconds of Wan 3.0 at 480p, 54 for an 8-second Veo 3.1 Lite clip with audio, 86 for 5 seconds of Kling v3. Against a per-clip stock licence, the arithmetic favours generation heavily once you need more than a handful.
The split most teams land on
Stock for people and places. Generation for product, texture, atmosphere, and anything brief-specific. Real capture for the hero shot and the mechanism.
That is three sources rather than two, and it is cheaper than it sounds because each is used for what it is cheapest at.
The questions that decide a specific shot
Does a human face appear? Stock, or film it. Is a real location identifiable? Stock, or film it. Does the client's legal team need a licence document? Stock. Is the shot specific to this brief? Generate. Do you need eight variations? Generate. Does it need to match five other shots exactly? Generate from one reference set.
What changed in the last year
Stock libraries added generated content of their own, which muddies the comparison: a "stock" clip may itself be generated, with the library's licence attached. That is arguably the best of both for buyers, and it is worth checking what you are actually licensing.
The other change is that generated b-roll got good enough for atmosphere and texture, which was the largest category of stock usage. The remaining stock strongholds are exactly the ones above, and they are strongholds because of rights and reality rather than pixels.
FAQ
Is AI video cheaper than stock? Per clip at volume, usually yes. For one clip right now, stock is often cheaper in total once you count attempts and your time.
Can I mix stock and generated footage in one edit? Yes, and it usually improves the generated material: real footage in a sequence raises the perceived reality of everything cut against it.
Will AI replace stock footage entirely? Not while shots need released faces, real places, and a licence document. Those are rights problems, not quality problems.
Stock for people and places, generation for everything specific to your brief. The 8frame canvas is free and unlimited, and generation is paid from $19/month.