YouTube Expands AI Tools with Veo 3 and Edit with AI Features

The streaming platform will make Veo 3, Google’s new AI video generator that is giving game developers and filmmakers jitters, available to regular users for creating short videos starting Tuesday, along with other AI updates to the well-liked app.

The company debuted new generative AI tools for Shorts creators on Tuesday during its Made on YouTube live event. In addition to a new remixing tool and a “Edit with AI” feature, YouTube is introducing a customized version of Google’s Veo 3 text-to-video generative AI model to Shorts.

According to YouTube, creating video clips is made simple with Veo 3 Fast, a customized version of Veo 3 that produces outputs with reduced latency at 480p. And for the first time, users can now do so with sound.

A limitless variety of styles and tones will be available for users to create eight-second vertical videos. Other AI tools for Shorts, including as video editing, object and motion addition, and visual styling, were also disclosed by the company. Additionally, a piece of dialogue from a video can be transformed into a song.

By linking the Veo 3 video generator to YouTube, users will have an additional means of promoting AI-generated content—and possibly slop—on social media. First access will be granted to users in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and a number of other countries. YouTube does not provide a filter to remove AI-generated videos from your Shorts feed, although the videos will be identified as such in their description text.

Veo 3, which was made accessible to paying Google AI subscribers in May, was greeted by a combination of excitement and apprehension from people in many industries due to its sophisticated features and ability to produce matching sound and video.

The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are all implementing this upgrade. In the future, YouTube intends to extend its operation to additional locations.

Additionally, YouTube is adding new Veo features to Shorts, such as the ability to add motion from a video to an image. For example, one way to animate a still image would be to have the person in it perform a dance from a video. According to the company, this is made feasible by technology that captures and transfers movement between subjects.

With Veo, creators may now integrate other styles, like origami or pop art, into their videos. Additionally, creators can now include text descriptions for objects like props or characters.

The upcoming months will see the rollout of these new features.

The new remixing tool allows creators to create catchy soundtracks for other shorts by transforming the dialogue from eligible videos.

“As the world’s largest creative playground, YouTube is where trends are born and where you can draw inspiration from. Imagine hearing a line of dialogue that sparks an idea — a funny phrase, a memorable quote, or a one-of-a-kind sound — and you want to remix it into a new sound,” YouTube’s Director of Product, Shorts and Generative AI Creation, Dina Berrada, wrote in a blog post. “With our new Speech to Song remixing tool, you’ll be able to do just that.”

According to YouTube, the soundtrack is produced by Google’s AI music model Lyria 2. The song’s creators can add their own vibes, such as “fun,” “danceable,” or “chill.”

According to the company, this feature will shortly be tested and will be made available to other United States creators in the upcoming weeks.

Creators can create initial drafts from their raw footage with the new Edit with AI feature. By selecting and organizing the greatest moments, adding music, and implementing transitions, it turns raw camera roll footage into a first draft. In Hindi or English, it can even add a voice-over that responds to the action in the video. According to YouTube, the feature’s goal is to provide creators with a beginning point for their shorts.

Eli Collins, vice president of product at Alphabet’s GOOGL -0.18% Google DeepMind, stated, “We’ve seen tons of interesting things that we had no idea were going to happen with the Veo launch. People’s imaginations on the internet are pretty unlimited.”

The shorts produced by the YouTube team were visually impressive, especially considering they were one-off takes without any trial and error.

Veo 3 has been optimized for speed and ease of use in this integrated version. It requires less tinkering and delivers at a lower resolution than the paid version.

YouTube, which last year became the most popular platform for podcast listeners, is also seeing the introduction of AI to podcasting. In addition to the ability to convert audio into video for those who prefer audio-first podcasts, users will receive recommendations from AI regarding which segments of a video podcast to convert into clips and shorts.

Analysts say it’s unclear if people will accept more AI tools and information in their feeds, but companies are still developing and promoting them.

By the end of next year, Meta hopes to enable marketers to use AI to generate and target ads, having launched a standalone AI app in April.

Next year, OpenAI intends to present a full-length movie that was primarily created with AI. Additionally, the Gemini AI app from Google just overtook ChatGPT from OpenAI as the most popular free app on the Apple App Store.

According to Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Emarketer, “People will say they don’t like and they distrust AI-generated content. While that certainly may be true, it doesn’t mean they’re not engaging with it.”

In the upcoming weeks, YouTube will roll out the Edit with AI tool in a few regions. The feature is already being tested on Shorts and in the YouTube Create app.