OpenAI’s Sora may have been shut down, but Google apparently thinks there’s still interest in a tool that lets you star in your own AI videos. On Thursday the technological giant was announced an update to Google Vids that will let 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’s bringing its Gemini Omni multimodal AI model to Vids, allowing you to create videos using a combination of written prompts and reference images you upload. Omni then mixes these inputs to create the AI video you want. It can also be used to do things like change the background or correct the lighting in a video recorded on your phone or add effects.
Additionally, Omni now supports step-by-step edits, meaning you can make changes to your video as you go instead of starting from scratch.
The updates push Google Vids beyond its original role as an AI-powered workplace presentation tool to 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 video tutorials, but personalized avatars and chat edits could put it in closer competition with other AI video startups and tools like Hey Gen, Composition, Lidtof ions, D-IDand more.
Google notes that the new AI avatars will be linked to the account owner’s likeness, linked to their Google Account, and invisibly watermarked with SynthID. (I guess that means no one will be using the tool to make weird AI videos of Google CEO Sundar Pichai the way OpenAI CEO Sam Altman let 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 of age or older.
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