Google Photos now lets you describe how to transform images into video

Google is giving Photos users more control over the app’s generative AI photo-to-video feature. Google Photos now supports text prompts for video generation, according to the update announcement on Monday, allowing users to describe the specific movement, style, or effect they want to see when bringing still images to life.

Text prompts join the existing “Subtle Movement” and “I’m feeling lucky” options that are already available for Google Photos’ image-to-video tool — neither of which allowed users to enter their own descriptions to guide the results. Google says Photos will provide prompt suggestions “for instant video inspiration,” and that text prompts can be edited to fine-tune the resulting video generations.

The new text prompt feature is restricted to users who are 18 or older. This age restriction only applies to Google’s image-to-video tool in Photos, however — text prompts have been available for the same capabilities in Gemini for some time, and are available to any users who are 13 or older. The ability to add descriptive prompts brings Photos’ image-to-video tool more in line with rival AI editors like xAI’s Grok, which was notably abused to undress photos of real people and children.

Generative AI features in Google Photos aren’t available in all regions yet, and the exact functionality can vary by location. You can check out Google’s support page for more information about current restrictions.

The update also allows Google Photos users to include audio by default in every video they create using the image-to-video feature, producing videos that are ready to publish online without any additional editing. In another update, Google introduced a new Google Photos picker for Gmail that makes it easier to share images and videos from your albums, collections, and shared albums over email. The feature allows you to select multiple photos and videos at the same time, and search for specific photos and album names.