For most of us, creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations is an indispensable part of work life in 2024. What is no longer the case is creating videos. Google wants to change that. On Tuesday, the company announced Google Vids, a video creation app for work that the company says can use AI to make anyone a “great storyteller.”
Vids uses Gemini, Google’s latest AI model, to quickly create videos for the workplace. Type a command prompt, enter some documents, images and videos and sit back and relax while Vids creates a complete storyboard, script, music and voiceover. “As a storytelling medium, video has become ubiquitous because of its immediacy and ability to ‘cut through the noise,’ but it can be daunting to know where to start,” Google Vice President Aparna Pappu said in a blog post in which she announced this app. “Vids is your video, writing, production and editing assistant all in one.”
In a promotional video, Google uses vids to create a video that recaps moments from its Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas, an annual event where the company introduced the app. Based on a simple request to create a summary video and attach a document with information about the event, Vids creates a narrative overview that can be edited. The user can then select a template for the video – you can choose from research proposal, new hire introduction, team milestone, quarterly business update and more – and then crunch for a few moments before spitting out a first draft of a video, complete with storyboard, Stock media, music, transitions and animations. It even generates a script and voice-over, but you can also record your own. And you can manually select photos from Google Drive or Google Photos to seamlessly insert them into the video.
This all looks pretty snazzy, but it’s important to remember what Vids isn’t: a replacement for AI-powered video generation tools like OpenAI’s upcoming Sora or Runways Gen-2, which create videos from scratch based on text prompts. Instead. Google Vids uses AI to understand your prompt, create a script and voiceover, and stitch together images, videos, music, transitions, and animations to essentially create a souped-up slide deck. And because Vids is part of Google Workspace, you can collaborate in real time just like in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
Who asked for it? I suspect that HR departments and chiefs of staff often need to create onboarding videos for new employees, announce company milestones, or create training materials for teams. But if Google decides to make Vids available beyond Workspace, which is typically used by companies, I can imagine people using this outside of work too, easily creating videos for a birthday party or vacation and using their own photos and videos whenever available in a broader sense
Videos will be available in June and will be available in Workspace Labs for the first time. This means you have to log in to test it. It’s not yet clear when it will be more widely available.