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What if you could insert a single still image and make an entire video? While this may seem far-fetched, it's actually something you can do with Google's latest AI effort, the Vlogger AI video generator.
Google researchers unveiled Vlogger this week, showcasing the AI model's capabilities in several videos and a paper detailing the AI's capabilities. The tool allows the user to input a reference image and then feed various commands to the AI to help determine what the video should look like. It's a slightly different approach to video generation compared to OpenAI's Sora, but it can still have many uses.
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There are obviously some concerns surrounding these capabilities. For starters, what's to stop someone from simply inserting an image of any random person and then creating AI videos of them? Google's Vlogger AI video generator will allow you to do just that. It will also allow you to match a person's mouth to an audio track, even if it's in another language, so you can technically create content in Spanish using someone who doesn't speak Spanish.
Based on the information available in the article and on the project website, it appears that you will also be able to command the AI generator to move the persona's body. It's possible I'm misunderstanding the notes provided in the project information, but if that's the case, it certainly gives you a lot of control over the video.
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Of course, the technology is far from perfect and there are still telltale signs that the Vlogger is generating these videos using AI. In some examples, mouth movements appear unnatural, which betrays the use of AI to create the video. But that's the thing with AI: it doesn't have to be perfect to be useful. And that's the worst the Vlogger will ever be. As time passes and Google adds more material to the model, it will only get better and better.
I'm not sure about you, but this is both scary and exciting. For now, at least, Vlogger's AI video generator isn't perfect enough to be too useful for deep fakes or disinformation campaigns. But if we can't handle AI going forward, it could very well have a place in these areas once Google improves it further.
