AI-Powered UGC Ad Creation App — xAI Hackathon
A unified mobile pipeline that transforms trending data into scripts, storyboards, and final edits in real time.
DirecX is an AI-powered iOS filmmaking app built in 24 hours at the xAI Hackathon in San Francisco. Our team — a CS × Film double major, an animation artist, and a design engineer — united around a shared frustration: professional video production is gated behind expensive tools, fragmented workflows, and steep learning curves.
Snap a photo of your product, and Grok 4.1 Fast doesn't just generate a script — it pulls live trending data from X to ensure your ad rides the viral moment. Grok acts as your director: delivering a shot-by-shot storyboard, a scrolling teleprompter, and automatic rough-cut assembly. Camera shy? Grok Voice generates a professional AI voiceover on demand.
Three-phase filmmaking, zero room for solo creators.
Professional video production is broken into three isolated phases — pre-production, production, and post-production — each requiring specialized skills and separate tools. This structural fragmentation creates a hard creative wall for solo creators and small brands. The design challenge: how do you compress a high-expertise pipeline into a mobile-first experience without sacrificing narrative quality or creative agency?
AI that scripts to today's trends — not yesterday's templates.
During the sprint, I led the strategic pivot from a general-purpose video tool to a specialized 'AI Ad Director' — a more focused, higher-value proposition. My design focus was twofold: Motion-driven Guidance, using real-time X trending data to dynamically shape script tone and pacing; and Frictionless Capture, keeping the technology invisible so users stay in the creative flow. I designed the teleprompter and shot-overlay system as a single synchronized layer, translating directorial logic into real-time visual cues.
Shot direction and teleprompter, synchronized in real time.
I designed and built a unified iOS pipeline integrating Grok 4.1 Fast, Grok Voice, and the X API into a single continuous flow — from photo input to exported video. The core UX innovation was a synchronized shot-overlay + teleprompter system: as the script plays, dynamic framing guides tell the user exactly where to position the camera and how to deliver each line. Complex directorial decisions become intuitive visual feedback, removing the need for any filmmaking expertise.
Demo
A full film pipeline. 24 hours. One pocket-sized app.
Shipped a complete Storyboard-to-Export pipeline within the 24-hour window. The AI-driven motion guidance system compressed a multi-day production workflow into a single mobile session — what traditionally requires a pre-production day, a shoot day, and an editing session now takes minutes. The project validated that AI motion direction can make professional-grade, trend-relevant video production accessible to anyone.