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 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, rather, at those that have no professional experience with video creation. It's meant to enable an executive to become a "great storyteller through video," a medium Google claims has become "ubiquitous for its immediacy and ability to 'cut through the noise.'"
To that end, Google Vids will use Gemini, Google's multimodal or general AI model that in the Workspace environment is an integrated "AI-powered assistant," currently built into Workspace apps like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. After a prompt from the user about 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 for Gemini for Google Workspace users, starting with Google Workspace Labs testers in June 2024. It is currently available to Google's alpha 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, though it appears to be the amongst the first such AI-powered offering from the big productivity companies including Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe.
What does Google Vids do?
Google says Vids is meant to be a video storytelling app for those with limited video creation experience. The company claims it can be used for a variety of purposes, from HR onboarding and training to digital learning and how-to tutorials, among many others.
We have a fair idea of how Google Vids will work looking at the product demo from Google Cloud Next 2024, or the Google Vids introduction video. You can choose to use the tools from scratch yourself (via The Verge) or by entering 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 with narrative highlights that can be dragged to reorder, deleted, or individually edited. You can also add new narrative highlights to the outline. 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. It then creates a first draft of the video, using "stock videos, images, and background music". Then, take steps to edit the script, change the selected Gemini AI-powered voiceover options or create your own voiceover, edit the video timeline, add a screen recording or a personal video message, and more. As with other Workspace apps, the Google Vids created video can be collaborated upon by other team members.
How and when can you get access to Google Vids?
Google says the Google Vids app will be available to those that are part of its Gemini for Google Workspace plans, with pricing starting at $20 per user per month for the Gemini Business plan, going 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. To get access to Gemini, you will need an existing Google Workspace plan. At the time of writing, 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.
What's Google Workspace Labs? It's 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 LABS.GOOGLE Discord application or express interest via the Google Workspace Labs Signup page.