In this age of artificial intelligence, AI video generators are nothing new: all one has to do is look at OpenAI’s Sora announcement to see how urgent a problem these surreal yet completely fake videos will be.
However, Google is trying something new with its new video service. Announced during Google Cloud Next 2024, Vids is a new Workspace app that Google is marketing as an "AI-powered video creation" program rather than an AI video generator. Video doesn't necessarily create a video out of thin air, but it will help you realize the project you want to create for your work. While the video is a manual experience from start to finish, its AI-driven features are the novelty here.
Here's how Google integrates video into your workflow: You open the app in Workspace and describe your vision for the video in a text field. You can even link to work in other Workspace apps (such as Documents) for reference.
Vids then generates various storyboards for your project, from the intro to each step in the video timeline. You can rearrange, edit, and delete any items in this outline to create a draft you are happy with. Next, you choose a "style" for your video, which reminds me of choosing a website design in something like Squarespace (if you've ever done that).
Gemini will process your selections and generate a video draft containing stock images, video, music, and sound effects. All these elements are presented in the video editor, which you can control to adjust, edit, delete or swap any element you want. You can even use Recording Studio to record voiceovers for your videos. You can use your own voice, or choose one of Google's options.
You can export and share still videos made with Vids like any other video editing software, but Google also allows these products to collaborate. You can generate a "video" and share it with others, who can then edit and modify the project themselves, similar to how other team-oriented Google products work.
Like Google's other Cloud Next 2024 announcements, such as tabs in Google Docs and AI-powered draft editing for Gmail, Vids will be a Workspace-exclusive app when it launches in June. This means that you or your company will need to pay for a Workspace plan before you can try Vids, which may mean that only enterprise users will be able to use its video generation features for now. Google is willing to bring videos to general Google accounts, though, so keep an eye on this area.
