Google Vids: generative video AI arrives in Google Workspace

Google Vids: generative video AI arrives in Google Workspace

Google Vids is Google’s answer to the growing demand for simple and fast video creation tools, directly integrated into collaborative work environments. Announced as a new application within Google Workspace, Google Vids leverages generative artificial intelligence (likely the Gemini models) to enable users to create professional-quality videos (marketing videos, training materials, project presentations, etc.) without requiring deep video editing skills. By combining script generation, media suggestion, assisted editing, and AI voiceover, Google Vids aims to democratize video production within businesses.

How it works: an end-to-end AI video assistant

The creation process in Google Vids revolves around AI assistance:

1. Brief and Scripting: The user describes the video’s objective and topic. The AI then proposes a storyboard and generates a first draft script, potentially drawing from existing documents in Google Drive (Docs, Slides).
2. Media Selection: The AI suggests relevant stock video footage, images, icons, and background music from integrated libraries or potentially generated by AI (like Dream Track?). Users can also upload their own media.
3. Voiceover: Users can record their own voiceover or choose from a selection of pre-recorded synthetic voices, or even type their text for an AI voice (AI voice cloning?) to read.
4. Editing and Style: The AI assembles everything, applying a predefined visual style (based on templates or the company’s brand guidelines if integrated into Workspace). The user can then easily edit the sequence, adjust timing, modify texts, and customize the style.

The tool is designed to be collaborative, allowing multiple users to work together on a video, similar to other Google Workspace apps like Docs or Slides. It directly competes with tools like Canva (and its Canva AI suite) or specialized AI video platforms, but with the advantage of native Workspace integration.

Benefits for business communication

The arrival of Google Vids offers several advantages for businesses:

• Video Democratization: Enabling more employees (marketing, HR, training, project managers) to create engaging videos without relying on specialized teams or expensive external agencies.
• Time and Cost Savings: Significantly speeding up the video production process for internal and external communications.
• Consistency (Potential): If the tool allows integration of corporate templates and brand elements, it can help maintain visual consistency.
• Simplified Collaboration: Facilitating teamwork on video projects through the familiar Google Workspace environment.

This can be particularly useful for quickly creating explainer videos, software tutorials, meeting summaries, executive messages, or short social media content.

Challenges: quality, originality, and brand control

Despite the promise of simplicity, challenges remain. The quality of AI-generated content (scripts, media suggestions) can be variable and will often require human intervention to reach a professional level. Originality can be an issue if too many companies use the same templates and synthetic voices. Brand control is a major concern: how to ensure that videos created by different employees scrupulously adhere to the brand guidelines, tone of voice, and key messages? Without strict governance, the ease of creation could lead to a proliferation of inconsistent or low-quality video content, damaging the brand image. Copyright issues related to AI-suggested media and managing bias in AI (in scripts or visual suggestions) are also considerations, along with data security and privacy.

Brandeploy: ensuring consistency for videos generated by Google Vids

To ensure that the use of Google Vids strengthens the brand rather than diluting it, a platform like Brandeploy is essential. Brandeploy acts as the central repository for all brand video assets and guidelines:

• Animated logos, official video intros/outros.
• Color palettes, typographies, and video layout rules.
• Library of brand-approved video footage and images.
• Guidelines on tone of voice and key messages for scripts and voiceovers.
• Validated brand music or jingles.

Google Vids users should be trained to use these assets and guidelines stored in Brandeploy. Ideally, Google Vids templates could be created adhering to the Brandeploy guidelines. Most importantly, videos finalized in Google Vids should go through a validation workflow in Brandeploy before any public or wide internal distribution. This workflow allows communication/marketing teams to verify message compliance, voiceover, visual style, and overall quality, thus ensuring professional and consistent video communication, even when produced decentrally and assisted by AI.

Google Vids promises to simplify video creation in business. Ensure this simplification doesn’t come at the expense of your brand image.

Brandeploy helps you define your video standards and validate creations for perfect consistency.

Discover how Brandeploy governs your video content, even AI-generated: request a demo.