Will X get a native AI video editor? Product head Nikita Bier responds

Artificial intelligence is rapidly compressing product development timelines, and even seasoned tech leaders are feeling the shift.

Nikita Bier, head of product at X, revealed that he was able to prototype a fully functional video editor into X just 15 minutes using AI tools, a task he initially believed would require months of engineering effort.

In a post on Sunday, Bier said he had planned to integrate a native video editor into X similar to those found in other social media apps and expected the project to take roughly three months of development time.

Instead, he decided to try building a prototype himself.

“I one shotted a full in browser editor in 15 minutes,” he wrote.

From months to minutes

The speed of the build surprised even Bier. What traditionally demands dedicated teams, design iterations, and long testing cycles was reduced to a single rapid session powered by generative tools.

He said the experience felt so transformative that he briefly wondered whether complex creative software suites might soon be obsolete.

“It felt like I could replace the entire Adobe software suite by Sunday,” Bier noted.

His comments reflect how AI-assisted coding and design tools are enabling faster experimentation, allowing product managers and non-engineers to ship working prototypes without deep technical knowledge.

Will manual editing survive?

Beyond the technical feat, Bier raised a broader question about the future of creative workflows.

He questioned whether manual video editing itself might become outdated within months, as chatbots and AI systems increasingly automate tasks such as cutting clips, adding transitions, and generating effects.

“Then I asked myself: will videos even be edited manually in three months? Chatbots can do reasonably well now,” he wrote.

AI-powered tools already offer automatic captioning, highlight detection, and one-click editing, reducing the need for traditional hands-on timelines.

A new challenge for product teams

Bier argued that the rapid pace of AI progress is also creating uncertainty for product leaders.

While faster tools accelerate development, they also make long-term planning harder, as features built today could be rendered irrelevant by smarter automation tomorrow.

“Product development is getting extraordinarily difficult when the world is changing so fast,” he said.