Google is making it easier than ever to turn your photos into creative videos with its latest AI-powered tools on YouTube Shorts and Google Photos. These new features are designed to help users—especially content creators—bring life to still images using smart effects, animations, and short video formats.
Turn Photos into Videos Instantly
One of the main highlights is a new image-to-video generator, built on Google’s advanced AI model called Veo 2. This allows users to take a single photo and automatically transform it into a short video with movement, background changes, and more.
Whether you want your image to appear like it’s underwater, on a mountaintop, or in a fantasy world—this tool can do it all using AI magic.
Remix Photos Into Creative Art Styles
Another exciting feature is called Remix. With this tool, users can:
- Change their selfies into anime-style characters
- Turn group photos into sketches, comic book art, or 3D animations
- Apply dreamy or imaginative effects in seconds
All it takes is choosing a photo from your device and picking your preferred style. The tool does the rest for you in moments.
Where to Access These Features
- In YouTube Shorts, you’ll now see a new “AI” button under the “Effects” menu when using the camera.
- In Google Photos, a “Create” tab has been introduced, housing all the new animation and video-generation options.
These tabs are being gradually introduced and will help users explore and try out different generative tools more easily.
Availability
For now, the new tools are live in:
- United States
- Canada
- Australia
- New Zealand
Google says it will expand access to other countries starting in August 2025.
What’s Next?
Google plans to upgrade these tools later this year with Veo 3, the next version of its AI model. This will enhance the quality, variety of styles, and speed of video generation.
YouTube has also confirmed it’s working on tools that allow users to create videos just by typing a text prompt—meaning you could describe a scene, and AI will build a video from it automatically.
Why It Matters
These updates reflect a big step in Google’s efforts to integrate generative AI into its most popular apps. With the rise of short-form video content and mobile creativity, tools like these:
- Save time for creators
- Lower the skill barrier for video editing
- Make visual storytelling more accessible to everyone
And with new features constantly in development, creators will soon be able to do even more—without needing professional editing software.
