Just a week after Material 3 Expressive was officially revealed, following an early leak that some users jokingly called "feminine", we're now getting a first look at a new feature quietly taking shape within Google's existing AI project, Illuminate. Illuminate is known for converting dense research papers into AI-generated audio discussions, though Neowin's testing shows it can handle just about any article, with users currently allowed 20 generations per day for these audio summaries.
Recent findings by TestingCatalog show that Google is expanding Illuminate's capabilities. A recent update revealed a homepage featuring AI audio summaries, including support for classic books like Frankenstein and The Great Gatsby. Among the new features are experimental controls such as an Edit button and image generation for cover photos, but the most notable addition is a section called "Sparks," a feature that generates short, TikTok-style explainer videos from user prompts.
Taking a look at Spark's description, the phrase "100% AI-generated" is key, implying a single model that handles both synchronized video and audio creation from a prompt.
TestingCatalog notes that samples of vertical videos, around one to three minutes long, are visible, though the actual generation tool appears to be internal to Google for now. Here's what one of those videos looks like (make sure to turn down the volume before hitting play):
You can find more samples in this X thread by TestingCatalog. The quality of these sample videos has led to speculation that Google's Veo 3 model or a powerful multimodal version of Gemini might be behind them.
Another point of interest is the potential link to NotebookLM, a service that, along with Illuminate and others, makes you wonder exactly how many "experimental" generative AI services the company has. Google has already confirmed plans to add a video overview feature with two AI hosts to NotebookLM, which will allow users to get AI-generated video explanations of their uploaded documents.
As TestingCatalog notes, given the similar conversational format, it is quite plausible that Illuminate's Sparks and NotebookLM's video features are leveraging the same underlying technology.
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