Google Vids Adds AI Avatars, Gemini Omni Editing
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- Google Vids now lets users generate a personalized AI avatar from a selfie and voice recording, the company announced Thursday.
- Google is bringing its multi-modal model Gemini Omni into Vids, enabling video creation from a written prompt plus uploaded reference images that Omni mixes together.
- Gemini Omni in Vids can also swap backgrounds, adjust lighting, and add effects to videos recorded on a phone, plus support step-by-step edits instead of forcing restarts.
- Personal avatars are locked to the account holder's likeness, invisibly watermarked with SynthID, and limited to users 18 and older in certain regions.
- The update repositions Google Vids from a workplace presentation tool into an all-in-one video creation platform, putting it in direct competition with AI video startups HeyGen, Synthesia, Captions, and D-ID.
Why it matters: By tying every custom avatar to a verified Google account and invisibly watermarking outputs with SynthID, Google sidesteps the kind of open misuse that the article notes accompanied OpenAI's Sora — yet still pushes Vids into the consumer AI-video space where startups like HeyGen and Synthesia already operate.
