Google Photos Gets Veo 3 AI for Turning Photos into Videos

Google Photos is rolling out an upgrade to its photo-to-video feature, now powered by the new Veo 3 AI model which significantly improves output quality. This feature, which first appeared in the mobile app this summer, was previously based on the Veo 2 model and could add subtle motion or generate a surprising animation effect.

The new Veo 3 technology, unveiled by Google in May, promises sharper and more natural-looking videos generated from a single still image. The tool is located in the "Create" tab, which houses various editing utilities. To use it, users select a photo from their gallery and follow the prompts to generate a silent, 4-second clip. All AI-generated videos will include a watermark indicating their synthetic origin.

There's an important catch: free access to Veo 3 will be limited. Google has implemented a daily cap on the number of videos a standard user can create. Subscribers to the paid Gemini AI Pro and AI Ultra tiers will be able to generate more clips, though the exact quotas for each subscription level have not been specified.

Beyond animating photos, the "Create" tab offers other tools like Remix (for changing a photo's style), making collages, creating music-based slideshows, and producing "cinematic" 3D photos. The gradual integration of cutting-edge AI into mass-market products like Google Photos, which boasts over 1.5 billion users, is a key company strategy. AI enhancements across Google's ecosystem, including: NotebookLM, which can now create videos from text; Google Docs, which gained a feature to read documents aloud; and Chrome, which is steadily being transformed into an AI assistant.

The update with Veo 3 integration is currently rolling out to users in the United States. There's no official word on a global release timeline for other regions yet, but it's safe to assume the feature will eventually be available worldwide. This follows the pattern of NotebookLM, which initially supported only English but now works with over 80 languages.