Google Vids now lets you star in your own AI videos

OpenAI’s Sora may be closed, but Google apparently thinks there’s still interest in a tool that lets you star in your own AI videos. On Thursday, the tech giant announced an update to Google Vids that lets you create a custom digital avatar that looks and sounds like you, based on a selfie and voice recording you upload.

Additionally, Google said it is bringing its multimodal AI model Gemini Omni to Vids, which lets you create videos using a combination of a written prompt and reference images that you upload. Omni then blends these inputs together to create the desired AI video. It can also be used to do things like change the background, correct the lighting in a video recorded on your phone, or add effects.

Additionally, Omni now supports step-by-step editing, meaning you can make changes to your video as you go instead of starting from scratch.

The updates see Google Vids move beyond its original role as an AI-powered workplace presentation tool and become more of an all-in-one video creation platform. By making Vids part of Google Workspace, the company is telegraphing its use as a business tool for things like company updates or training videos, but personalized avatars and conversational operations could put it in closer competition with other AI video startups and tools like Hello Gen, Synthesis, CapTions, DIDand others.

Google notes that the new AI avatars will be linked to the account holder’s likeness, their Google account, and invisibly watermarked with SynthID. (I guess this means no one will use Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s tool to create bizarre AI videos, as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had users do with Sora when it was available!)

The company also says that access to personal avatars is limited to users in certain regions who are 18 years or older.