If you’ve watched a lot of those horrible AI movie trailers and other weird and disturbing but occasionally cool AI videos than you might already be familiar with Veo 2. The video model from Google is shockingly capable of creating realistic video clips from practically nothing. It’s been available to use for months via Google Cloud’s enterprise-focused (and priced) Vertex AI platform. Now its coming to Gemini Advanced subscribers.
Gemini Advanced is Google’s answer to ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro. It’s a $20 a month subscription that gives you access to most of Google’s AI models. Adding Veo 2 immediately gives Gemini Advanced near parity with ChatGPT Plus, which added access to OpenAI’s Sora video model back in December.
Now two AI companies give you easy access to make creepy video content for $20 a month! What a deal! There are some limitations though. Videos are only available at 720p resolution and they can only be 8 seconds long (Sora can do 10 seconds). They’ll arrive in 16:9 landscape format in an MP4 file. So they should be relatively easy to upload to make your friends cringe at the dreamlike horrors your mind can conjure.
And given Veo 2 is trained on Google’s enormous library of video content (that’s the beauty of owning YouTube too) it’s one of the better models for creating dreamlike horrors. But it still has its limitations. The clips Google provided to showcase Veo 2’s power are all visually impressive with few of the creepy hallmarks of AI video, but they also look a lot like 3D animation. Crochet wildlife and cartoon cats aren’t anywhere close to the uncanny valley-like videos featuring realistic-looking humans. Google’s PR strategy here reminds me of the early days of CGI animation―when companies would avoid the uncanny valley at all costs to keep from terrifying moviegoers.
In addition to that news, Google is also launching Whisk Animate for Google One AI Premium subscribers. Whisk Animate is meant to make using prompt windows to create eldritch AI horrors easier. You should be able to get it to create new images and then animate those images using the Veo 2 model. Google One AI Premium includes a Gemini Advanced subscription plus Google One goodies like more cloud storage for the exact same $20 as Gemini Advanced. So it might be the better option for most people.
Now the standard generative AI disclaimer. As useful and fun as these tools will be for subscribers they will also make creating misinformation easier―provided you can get around Google’s guardrails. All videos generated by Veo 2 will be marked with Google’s SynthID, a digital watermark intended to mark videos as AI (and thus “fake”.) Google also says it’s done extensive red teaming to try and get ahead of the horrors our minds will attempt to conjure with Veo 2 too.
But if there’s one thing that separates humans from AI, it’s our ability to really fuck with AI and make it do super weird stuff. Veo 2 rolls out to Gemini Advanced subscribers starting today, so you can expect to see more visual horrors on your social media feeds by this evening.
