Google now has an AI video generator called Veo, which can take any image, even those created by artificial intelligence, and turn them into mini-movies. The videos look semi-realistic, which is good enough for advertisers, to whom Google is trying to sell its tool.
Google was the first to release its new model for private previews on its business-oriented Vertex AI platform. Veo joins Meta Movie Gen and the Runway video generation tool, though it also comes ahead of OpenAI’s Sora model, which has received a wider launch. Last month, artists posted a version of Sora online to protest the company’s use of artists with what they claimed was “minimal compensation” for testing the tool.
Veo can generate text from text prompts and/or images. Google combines it with its existing Imagen 3 model for any business that wants to create brand-specific images. The AI video generator can create videos tailored to different styles. The company demonstrated several examples, including a cartoon man looking at us from behind a table and smiling. There’s also a video of a teddy bear strumming a guitar without a single finger to strum the strings.
Google says that these images contain invisible digital watermarks, and the model will prevent users from creating something that could anger the public if they see it in the next cookie commercial. Imagen 3 also allows users to modify images using Inpaint generation to create new objects on an existing photo or the Outpaint tool to expand an image, with AI filling in the missing spaces. This is similar to Adobe’s existing Firefly tools in programs like Photoshop.
Like most AI video generators, Veo may be limited in the amount of video content it can generate. In fact, the generated ads may look like a jumble of random stock videos. AGoda’s chief marketing officer, Matteo Frigerio, says that the company created images of “dream destinations” and animated them with Veo.
The end result of such advertising campaigns is more ads of questionable quality. The current advertising model relies on cheap ads made quickly, so much so that they can fill every ad space in your social media feed. Mondelez’s vice president of consumer experience and digital commerce, Jon Halvorson, said the company is already using Imagen 3 to create “hundreds of thousands of personalized assets” to reduce “time to market and costs.”
Visual effects for AI videos may improve over time, although this won’t necessarily change how monotonous, gray, and lifeless they remain. A survey conducted by YouGov found that about half of consumers dislike ads that use AI-generated images for both people and products. Perhaps advertisers will learn the hard way that you can’t skimp on human-generated content, even for advertising.
