Google Photos: your memories become AI videos, with personalized prompts

Google has announced a fundamental update for the feature “Photo to video” within Google Photos, marking a new chapter in managing multimedia content via AI. Thanks to personalized prompts, it is possible to have greater creative control to convert static images into short dynamic videos, from your smartphone.

Google Photos evolves with the addition of personalized prompts: how the “Photo to video” feature changes

The real novelty of the update lies in the integration of customized textual prompts, a feature that drastically expands the previous options limited to “Light motion” or “I’m feeling lucky.” Now users who are at least eighteen years old can describe in detail the type of movement, the style, or the visual effect they want to apply to a photo.

The system, powered by the Veo 3 model, interprets the textual instructions to animate the image in a few moments. To facilitate the approach for less-experienced users, the interface automatically suggests ready-to-use prompts, while still leaving the freedom to modify and refine the text even after the video is generated to perfect the final result.

The improvements also extend to the audio experience, as every generated video can now include audio by default. This addition, which was previewed during the Veo presentation last year, aims to make creations even more dynamic and ready to be shared on social media without further editing steps.

The feature is being released globally and will be accessible in the ‘Create’ tab of the Android and iOS apps. Users have a daily quota of video generations, but there are higher usage limits for AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers.