It’s the most wonderful time of the year for tech lovers – Google’s annual I/O summit. CEO Sundar Pichai, who’s been heading the company since 2015, gave a two-hour keynote speech which predominately focused on how his teams will be keeping up with the growing demand for Artificial Intelligence. Already, plenty of buzz is generating around Google Veo – their “most capable” video generator yet. It’s comparable to Open AI’s Sora, which only launched three months ago but has been revolutionary for experimental creatives. The program isn’t ready for the general public just yet, but what was shown by Pichai and his collaborators looks promising. Here’s everything you need to know about Google Veo:
What Is Google Veo?
Past attempts at developing AI video generators have produced lackluster results – Google’s Phenaki and Imagen Video both created distorted and sometimes crude clips. In January 2024, they unveiled Lumiere, a massive step up from past attempts, though Sora didn’t take long to outshine them. As competitive as ever, Pichai’s teams set out to create Google Veo, a “consistent and coherent” system that “creates 1080p videos based on text, image and video prompts you provide.
It has an “advanced understanding of natural language,” according to a press release from Google. This means inputting instructions like “timelapse” and “aerial shots of a landscape” are likely to produce the results you’re after. As The Verge notes, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis confirmed that features for extending clips and storyboarding videos are in the works. Besides that, developers are making it a point to allow creators to provide feedback on the software before it’s launched to the general public. Select users will have access within Google Labs to “experiment with the model to determine how it can best support creatives.”
What Has Donald Glover Said About Google Veo?
Celebrity endorsements are as effective in tech as in any other industry, and this year, Google tapped multi-talent Donald Glover to aid them. The “Swarm” creator appeared in a video shared during the I/O Summit, showcasing a video he and his crew made using Google Veo. “You can make a mistake faster – that’s all you really want at the end of the day, at least in art, to make mistakes past,” the rapper/actor said. Others credited Veo’s ability to help them visualize creative ideas and speed up their workflow.
What Else Does The Tech Giant Have In Store After I/O 2024?
Now that the cat’s out of the bag, people are wondering what’s next from Google. Anyone interested in Veo will have to wait for full access, though there is a waitlist for the select features that are coming out in a private preview via VideoFX here. Elsewhere, there are plans to implement Google editing capabilities on YouTube Shorts “in the future.”
In addition to all of this, there’s the very exciting Project Astra that Pichai spoke extensively about. That also doesn’t have a rollout timeline quite yet, though it promises to bring exciting advancements to the world of AI – all accessible via your smartphone.
