It's named after the documentary filmmaker who used it to bring archival photos to life, and it's the engine behind most traditional real estate slideshows.
It works by cropping into the photo and moving that crop over time: zooming toward the fireplace or sliding across the kitchen. Because the image itself never changes, there's no depth. The sofa and the back wall move together, which is why a Ken Burns slideshow feels like looking at pictures rather than walking through a home.
It still has a place. It's fast, it never distorts the property, and almost every video editor can do it. For a quick price-change post or a photo recap, it's fine.
The difference with AI image-to-video is parallax. AI predicts how the room would look from slightly different positions, so objects in the foreground move faster than the background, the way they do in real footage. That's what makes a listing video feel filmed.
If you're comparing a slideshow maker with an AI listing video tool, ask one question: does it move a crop across my photo, or does it create real camera motion through the room?