Google Vids: What Is It And When Can You Get Access?

Google Vids is a new AI-powered video creation tool that will be available to Gemini for Google Workspace users. Announced in April during Google's Cloud Next developer conference, the Google Vids app will "sit alongside" the word processing tool Google Docs, presentation tool Google Slides, and popular spreadsheet tool Google Sheets as a new Google Workspace app. The app isn't aimed at professional creative teams, but instead meant to enable an amateur to become a "great storyteller through video."

To that end, Google Vids will use Gemini AI, similar to how it's currently built into Workspace apps like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. After a prompt from the user regarding what type of storytelling video you want to create, Google Vids uses Gemini AI as a scriptwriting, production, and editing assistant to generate a storyboard that can be further customized. Google Vids will be available to Gemini for Google Workspace users, starting with Google Workspace Labs testers in June 2024, and is currently available to Google's alpha test customers for feedback.

The launch of Google Vids takes on similar video creation tools, from the popular design website Canva, Peech, Descript, Loom, Vimeo, or ClickUp. That said, it's one of the first AI-powered editing apps from the big productivity companies, including Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe.

We have a fair idea of how Google Vids will work based on the product demo from Google Cloud Next 2024, as well as with the Google Vids introduction video. You can choose to use the graphic and text tools from scratch, or enter a prompt — with the option of attaching additional reference data via Google Workspace files — and then pressing "create." You are then presented with a video outline, generating bullet points and key aspects based on your prompt, with narrative highlights that can be dragged to reorder, delete, or individually edit. You can also add new narrative highlights to the outline as well. If you don't like what you see, press "Recreate" for a new video outline.

Pressing "next" takes you to the Google Vids templates page, where you can choose a "style" for the video based on color schemes, graphic styles, and more fine touches. It then creates a first draft of the video, using "stock videos, images, and background music." Then, you can take steps to edit the script, change the selected Gemini AI-powered voiceover options, or record your own voiceover, edit the video timeline, add a screen recording or a personal video message, and more. As with other Workspace apps, colleagues can collaborate on Google Vids-created videos.

Google says pricing will start at $20 per user per month for the Gemini Business plan, and goes up to $30 per user per month for the Gemini Enterprise plan. At the time of writing, Google was offering a "try at no cost for 14 days" option for existing Google Workspace subscribers. As for when you can get access, Google in its Google Vids announcement said that the new app will become available first to Google Workspace Labs testers in June. As of this writing, Google Vids is still only available in Google Workspace Labs for testing purposes.

If you're interested in testing out Google Vids, you'll need to sign up for Google Workspace Labs. Labs for both Workspace and Google accounts in general is an invite-only, trusted tester program for AI features in Google products. Signing up isn't very easy, and you will have to apply to join the waitlist via the Google Labs Discord application, or express interest via the Google Workspace Labs Signup page.