Google has announced a slew of new, experimental AI tools coming to Photos, including a new feature for remixing photos and a photo-to-video generator, powered by Veo 2. These tools are aimed at giving you more ways to mess around with the pictures you already have stored in your gallery.
The photo-to-video tool is similar to what we have seen in Gemini and TikTok. Here"s how it works: You select a picture from your gallery, then choose a simple prompt like "Subtle movements" or "I"m feeling lucky" to animate it.
The AI then spits out a short video, with a 6-second limit on the clip. This is definitely a more constrained system than TikTok"s AI Alive, which gives you a text box to direct the animation, so do not expect fine-grained control. This feature is starting to roll out today in the U.S. for Android and iOS users.
Moving on, the next AI-powered tool Photos is getting is "Remix". This one is a style-transfer feature that will let you, well, "remix" images from your gallery into different artistic formats. Google provided examples like turning your portraits or pet photos into anime, comics, or 3D animations. This feature will begin rolling out in the US on both Android and iOS over the coming weeks.
To house all these new functions, there"s also now a new "Create" tab, which Google is calling "your new hub for creativity". It is designed to contain all the app"s creation-focused features, including these new AI tools alongside older ones like collages and highlight videos. This hub will start appearing for users in the U.S. in August.
As for transparency, whatever content Photo to video and Remix generates will include an invisible SynthID watermark, similar to what the company already does with the ReImagine feature in Photos. Google also noted that generated videos will have a visible watermark for good measure.