Google announced Wednesday a bit of good news for Workspace users: Vids, a video-editing tool, will be made free for all users. Previously, it was a paid add-on. Not everything from Vids is free, however. If you want all the new AI-powered bells and whistles, you’ll still need to pay up.
You might not have previously heard of Vids — after all, it was a paid add-on — but Google says it has 1 million monthly active users. Now that it’s free to all Workspace users, it’ll likely prove helpful to have a video editor that’s directly integrated with Google Drive. That should streamline work for lots of folks.
You’d be forgiven if all the different Google video tools proved confusing. To clear things up: There’s Google Flow, an AI-powered generative tool aimed at cinematic users. There is, of course, Vids, a work-focused video tool that now has AI features via Gemini. And there’s Google Veo 3, which is the model that powers all of Google’s AI video tools.
But while it is news that Workspaces users now get free access to Vids, the real news — as in, new features — lies primarily with the addition of those AI offerings for business, enterprise, and paid AI plans only.
So…what are those AI features?
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Google Vids new AI features
The grabbiest new AI feature in Vids is the ability to convert images into short, 8-second videos with sound.
“This means you can upload a product shot, or company stock photography, and use a text prompt to create animated video clips with native audio that are aligned with your brand,” Google wrote in a blog post.
The other major addition is the addition of AI avatars. At first glance that might not seem super useful for Workspace users, who are primarily using the service for, well, work. But Google noted users can upload a script then have an avatar deliver the message, which could prove helpful for last-minute training videos or demos.
The final major AI-powered upgrade is a tool that’ll clean up transcriptions. As a journalist who conducts video interviews, I can attest to how helpful that would prove. The idea is that the AI-powered feature will cut fillers words like “umm” or awkward pauses. Recording a video should take way fewer takes if your editor automatically cuts out the filler.
Anything and everything is integrating AI these days and it tracks that Vids would get such upgrades. Hopefully it makes the workday a bit easier for a few folks.
