Payroll explainers: captions on a locked slide
Do not generate employees.
Do not generate employees. A payroll explainer is a locked slide — the real UI, the real calendar, the real withholding table — plus words. Those words are speech you already recorded or a line you already wrote. Neither job needs a synthetic staff member pointing at a dashboard the model invented.
Generated "HR teammates" are private people or lookalikes. That is not a UGC style. A deepfake of a private person is not a style: TikTok's private-figure rule is permission, not a label, and a synthetic employee used as a testimonial is a reviews-rule problem on top of likeness. Lock the slide. Caption it.
The slide is already the picture
Export the screen. Use the actual pay-stub template with dummy numbers compliance already approved. That file is frame one. Do not prompt "a friendly payroll specialist explaining direct deposit." You will get a face you cannot name and a UI that is not yours.
If the explainer needs motion, image-to-video can push in on the locked slide. Prompt only the camera. Do not ask the model to rewrite the cells. Fine text is the first thing a generate loses, and the only thing a payroll buyer will audit.
Generating staff is a likeness problem
A "generic employee" who matches a coordinator on LinkedIn is that coordinator. Style-referencing a staff headshot is how you get their head. Employees are not public figures. Last year's photo-day release usually authorises photographs, not new performances.
Allowed, tightly: a person who does not exist and is not a lookalike, with disclosure; someone who signed a replica grant; your own face with written consent if the company will keep the model. Not allowed: fake reviewers, staff as extras, minors.
Payroll is a claims surface. A generated face saying "we never miss a tax filing" is an endorsement you have to defend. The same sentence as type on a locked slide is still a claim, but it is your sentence.
Speech captions vs authored type
Two finishing jobs. Do not mix them.
If someone spoke — founder VO, a screen-share — add captions to a video transcribes the speech and burns styled, word-timed subtitles. VEED path: 21 BASIC presets at the standard rate, 9 DYNAMIC presets at 2×, 165 language codes. It listens. A silent slide has nothing to transcribe. add_veed_captions transcribes speech; it does not write a headline.
If the words were never spoken — a hook, a statutory line — that is an overlay. Add a text overlay burns caption_text you supply for the whole file. Top, center, or bottom. It does not listen. A text overlay burns one authored line; it does not listen.
Prompts do not typeset. Asking the generate to "put the withholding rates on screen" is how you ship a misspelled tax line you cannot edit. Lock the picture. Print the real string after.
What a payroll explainer is allowed to be
A screen recording with VO, then transcription captions. A locked slide with one authored legal line. A UI loop with no people in it. A founder who agreed to be on camera.
It is not a synthetic office of "relatable W-2 employees," and it is not a generated pay stub with someone else's name. If a current employee would say "that is me," you generated staff. Delete it. Caption the slide you already had.
FAQ
Can I use an invented presenter if I disclose that it is AI?
Disclosure is not a grant from a private person, and it does not turn a fake employee into a real one. An invented face with no living referent is a different (still regulated) object from a replica of your coordinator. Do not split the difference with "we changed the hair."
The explainer is silent. Should I still run auto-captions?
No. Auto-captions transcribe speech. Silence returns a spent pass and no type. Overlay the line you wrote, or record a VO and then transcribe.
Is a screenshot of our product UI safe to animate?
As a plate, yes, if the numbers are approved dummy data and you do not let the model rewrite the cells. Animate the camera, not the figures. Zoom to 100% and read every line before you ship.
What if sales wants "UGC of a tired office manager"?
Hire an actor and say they are an actor, or film a real customer with a replica grant. Generating the tired office manager is a private-figure replica plus a fabricated testimonial. Caption a locked slide instead.