Hailuo (MiniMax)
Hailuo is an AI video-generation model from MiniMax that has drawn attention for one hard-won capability: character consistency. In a field where most models struggle to keep a person or mascot looking the same from shot to shot, Hailuo holds a character’s appearance, clothing, and features across scenes — which is what makes actual narrative video possible.
Core capabilities
- Character consistency — the defining feature; the same human or animated character across multiple clips, settings, and actions.
- Image-to-video with likeness preservation — supply a reference image and Hailuo animates that character while keeping their look.
- High-fidelity text-to-video with strong prompt adherence for specific scenes, actions, and styles.
- Narrative suitability — built for short stories, multi-scene ads, and recurring-character content.
Where it fits. Narrative brand storytelling with a consistent protagonist, social-media series built around a recurring mascot, explainer and demo videos led by the same character, and full character-driven campaigns where the figure must look identical everywhere.
Pricing. Rollout has followed the pattern of other frontier video models — waitlisted access and a freemium or subscription model, where a free tier offers limited credits and paid tiers add more generations, higher quality, and commercial rights. Check MiniMax for current access and pricing.
Practical notes. The character lock is the reason to choose it: other models may produce more cinematic single shots, but Hailuo wins when a character must recur. Start from a clear, high-quality reference image and anchor every prompt to it. For teams moving past disconnected clips toward coherent storytelling, it is a notable step forward.
Direct link: https://www.minimaxi.com/
